Tops Campaign Targets Underage Drinking

In honor of Alcohol Awareness Month in April, Tops Markets LLC is teaming up with Px20, a collaboration of Erie County agencies dedicated to preventing substance abuse and promoting mental and physical health, to raise awareness of underage drinking. Px20 agencies visited Tops’ Elmwood Avenue store in Buffalo, N.Y., this week to reveal local efforts in support of this cause, as well as undertake “Project Sticker Shock,” a stickering program already adopted by various states that is designed to remind consumers that it’s illegal for anyone 21 or older to buy or provide alcohol for minors.

Under Project Sticker Shock, brightly colored stickers are placed on multipacks of beer and other alcoholic beverages. The stickers contain warning messages for purchasers about the penalties for furnishing alcohol to minors.

Nationwide, about 10 million people under the age of 21 drank alcohol in the past month, according to the latest data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Survey data collected in the western New York area found that 70 percent of local teen drinkers start at age 15 or younger.

National Alcohol Awareness Month aims to highlight the many health and safety problems caused by excessive drinking by anyone, and to educate teens and parents about the perils of underage drinking.

Px20’s name derives from “Px” being shorthand for “prevention,” while “20” places the organization’s focus in the 21st century by allowing continuing initiatives to be labeled Px2010.

Williamsville, N.Y.-based Tops operates 132 full-service supermarkets -- 126 company-owned and six franchise locations -- and employs more than 14,000 associates in upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania.