BACKGROUND: Excessive alcohol consumption is a leading cause of preventable death causing more than 88,000 deaths per year in the US and costing the US approximately $249.0 billion annually. The Community Guide recommends the regulation of alcohol outlet density to reduce alcohol-related harm. Very few studies have assessed alcohol outlet density in small municipalities or rural areas. The purpose of this study is to assess effects of alcohol outlet density in two small municipalities (Gallup, pop=25,365; Las Cruces, pop=66,283) in New Mexico, the state with the highest alcohol-related death rate, and examine the association between alcohol outlet density and violent crime in these areas.
METHODS: NM Alcohol and Gaming Division provided liquor license information in New Mexico for 2015. Gallup Police Department and Las Cruces Police Department provided data of violent crimes (homicide, aggravated assault, sexual assault, robbery) within their jurisdictions for 2015. Liquor license and crime data were geocoded. The alcohol outlet exposure was calculated by taking the sum of the inverse distances between census block centroids and nearest seven alcohol outlets for each geographic study area. The crime outcome was calculated in the same manner. The association between alcohol outlet exposure and violent crime was modeled using linear regression.
RESULTS: In 2015, Las Cruces and Gallup had 130 and 52 active liquor licenses, respectively. Sixty percent of licenses in Gallup and 46% of licenses in Las Cruces were ‘Dispenser” licenses, which allow the outlets to sell beer, wine, or spirits either on-premise, off-premise, or both. In Las Cruces for 2015, the most reported violent crimes were aggravated assault (65%) and sexual assault (21%). In Gallup for 2015, most reported violent crimes were robbery (50%) and sexual assault (25%). There was a positive association between alcohol outlet exposure and violent crime in Gallup (β=0.47, S.E.=0.04, p < 0.0001) and Las Cruces (β=0.59, S.E.=0.07, p < 0.0001).
CONCLUSIONS: Despite very small populations in Gallup and Las Cruces, results from this analysis indicate that clustering of alcohol outlets is associated with higher incidence of violent crime. Further analysis on the distance between alcohol outlets in census blocks with more crimes can provide insight into how to define alcohol outlet density in small metropolitan/semi-rural areas.