• Tijuana City Hall, Paseo Centenario, Friday morning, 11 a.m. Tijuana Police Chief Alfred de la Torre will unveil enforcement tactics, including use of electronic scanners.

• Border Station Parking Lot, Camino de la Plaza and Camiones Way, last U.S. exit, 8 p.m. to midnight. Designated Driver Program. Pledge signing, hands stamped to ID designated drivers.

• Eight nightclubs along Avenida Revolución, Tijuana, 8 p.m.-5:30 a.m. People’s, Buckets, Caves, Torito Pub, Iguanas, Escape, Safari and Club A will give free non-alcoholic beverages to designated drivers.
• Southbound pedestrian turnstiles—last exit, throughout evening. Operation Safe Crossing. Multi-agency law enforcement operation checking ID’s, turning away those under 18, detaining those with false ID’s and enforcing curfew. Community volunteers distributing information.
• Northbound pedestrian and border crossing area Operation Safe Crossing and Designated Driver Program, until dawn. Enforce existing alcohol and public intoxication laws. Community and college student volunteers operating voluntary breathalyzer, distributing water bottles/straps, coordinating dinner drawing.

Spring break or no spring break, San Ysidro parking lot owner Debra Marbut sees young people heading to Tijuana at night for one thing. "Any season, there’s one reason—they go to party-have fun and quite often they end up getting drunk," says Marbut. Every opportunity she and her employees at Border Station Parking encourage young people who seem too drunk to drive to take a taxi home. She phones the taxi and lets them leave their car in her lot for no charge, even though parking fees are her bread and butter. "We need to provide alternatives to driving for these young people," says Marbut. "Somebody needs to be responsible and look for drinking alternatives, we can do this."

This spring break, Marbut is working with other businesses and community volunteers on both sides of the border, including the South Bay Reach Out to Families Center, SDSU’s Student to Student coalition and San Diego County Responsible Hospitality Coalition (RHC). They give incentives for young people to completely abstain from alcohol. Marbut and volunteers will set up at Border Station Parking and ask designated drivers to sign a pledge that they won’t drink any alcohol.

Designated drivers will also have their hands stamped, which entitles them to free non-alcoholic drinks at eight different cooperating nightclubs in Tijuana. Iguanas Ranas manager Jorge Malajevich wants to help in anyway possible. "We want to work as good business neighbors to address this problem," says Malajevich.

Upon their return to the U.S., if designated drivers have not consumed any alcohol and pass a voluntary breathalyzer test, they receive a free water bottle and carrying case donated by Border Station Parking. "We have a warehouse full of water bottles and cases," says Marbut. "We will gladly give away thousands."

Designated drivers will be entered in a drawing to win gift certificates at Pacific Beach Bar & Grill or Rockin Baja Lobster. The restaurants are members of the San Diego County Responsible Hospitality Coalition (RHC), which has actively participated in Operation Safe Crossing since it began nearly two years ago. RHC project coordinator Marian Novak defines designated driver. "Unlike what many young people think, the term designated driver does not mean the person in the group who has consumed the least amount of alcohol," says Novak. "It very clearly means no booze at all."

Operation Safe Crossing—the binational, multi-agency law enforcement operation—is scheduled for this weekend and next. Captain Adolfo Gonzales of the San Diego Police Department Southern Division leads Operation Safe Crossing and says officers will stop those under 18 years old from entering Mexico without parental consent and check for falsified ID. In addition, officers will be evaluating people returning to the U.S. from Tijuana, controlling public intoxication and intervening to prevent alcohol-related crashes and other alcohol-induced crime and violence.

During the 1998 spring break in Mexico, at least one young person died, hundreds were arrested and 12 Americans were deported back to the U.S. Just this year, two young people lost their lives on the highway after drinking in Mexico, prompting the Institute for Health Advocacy (IHA) to push for strong policy measures in the U.S. and Mexico. "The bloodbath is predictable and will continue until these policy changes are implemented to clear up this problem," says IHA Executive Director James Baker. The measures IHA advocates include:

• Pass and enforce a strict California State law allowing for breath testing, arrest, detention or referral to alcoholism treatment—as appropriate—for those under 21 returning from Mexico.

• IHA asks California Governor Gray Davis and Baja California Governor Lic.Alejandro Gonzales Alcocer to put this serious problem on their agendas during upcoming, joint, bi-national summits.
• Work with authorities in Baja California towards accomplishing the shared goals of closing bars by no later than 2 a.m. and increasing the drinking age to 21 for foreign visitors.
• Continue the increases already being made in enforcement of existing alcohol laws on both sides of the border.

• Make it illegal in California to promote drinking to youth and binge drinking, regardless of where the drinking takes place.

"Nothing less than the above measures will stop the carnage," says Baker. "The reality is that deaths will continue unless major changes are made. Positive changes will improve the public health, safety and economic condition of the San Diego/Tijuana area."

During spring break, thousands of college students are expected to cross the border to Mexico seeking cheap alcohol and lots of it. Mexican authorities are shoring up forces, however, and are conducting DUI operations, ID checks using electronic scanners, drinking age enforcement and enforcement of other alcohol-related crimes. They are prepared to make arrests if spring break revelers break the law.

In Mexico, you can be arrested and jailed for drinking in public, urinating or being nude in public, being intoxicated, fighting, possessing a weapon or drugs, and using a fake ID. "I appeal to college students, don’t drink so much that you vomit in our streets, do time in our jails or end up victims of violent crimes—or worse yet—dead," says Edgardo Flores, Director of Tijuana’s Alcohol Beverage Control (Reglamentos Municipales). "Tijuana wants your tourism, admiration and friendship—not your trash, crime statistics and drunken casualties. This spring break, Tijuana authorities will not look the other way."

Baja California’s Secretary of Tourism, Lic. Juan Tintos, says the problem strains public safety resources and taints tourism. "This is a joint effort," says Tintos. "We don’t want drunken unruliness in our streets."

Since August 1997, when Operation Safe Crossing began, thousands of teenagers have been turned away and the number of partiers has been reduced by 30 percent. Operation Safe Crossing is the binational enforcement component of the Cross-Border Project to Reduce Teen and Binge Drinking in Mexico. Prevention components include Responsible Beverage Service training to bar owners and employees in Mexico and binational community organizing and issue-framing workshops.

CONTACTS:

Cipriano Soto, Manager, Escape, Safari, Club A 011-52-66-85-63-43

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