Conference on Alcohol Use Aims to Form New Coalition : Northeast Valley: Community activists say a unified approach is needed to battle problems in San Fernando and Pacoima. The meeting is dedicated to a leader killed by a drunk driver.

Youth minister Daniel Miramontes was a martyr to his mission.

He had quit his job with a check-printing firm to work full time with a youth group at Santa Rosa Catholic Church in San Fernando and was trying to pluck deeply disaffected teen-agers from the precipice represented by gangs, drugs and alcohol.

Then, last November, at the age of 26, he was killed when his car was hit by another that was barreling down Glenoaks Boulevard at more than 90 m.p.h.

The driver of the other car, Cruz Rodriguez, 39, of Sun Valley was determined by police to be drunk and was later charged with vehicular manslaughter. Miramontes’ wife, Diana, eight months pregnant and a passenger in the car, was severely injured and hospitalized for six weeks. The couple’s son was born by Cesarean section.

“Danny Miramontes’ . . . death is symbolic of so many, many deaths . . . directly related to alcohol,” said Xavier Flores, a program director with the Northeast Valley Health Corp., which runs alcohol treatment and prevention programs. “It was a great loss to our community. It’s precisely to avoid these kind of disasters that we are working so hard.”

A conference on alcohol problems scheduled for today at the Boys and Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley in Pacoima is dedicated to Miramontes’ memory.

Organized by the Community Environmental Alcohol Prevention Program which Flores heads, the gathering of nationally known experts and local leaders is aimed at activating a coalition of community groups to battle alcohol-related problems by influencing public policy and community attitudes.

The organizers and participants in the conference said they are not prohibitionists. Instead, they want to help sensitize residents, policy makers and the liquor industry to the problems caused by alcohol abuse in the largely poor and minority communities of Pacoima and San Fernando.

Eighty-seven percent of Pacoima’s population and 83% of San Fernando’s residents are Hispanics, according to the 1990 U.S. census, and an estimated 10% of Pacoima’s population is black.

Alcohol abuse “is a major public health problem among Latinos,” said Juana Mora, an associate professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge and a member of the state Advisory Board on Alcohol-Related Problems.

Men born in Mexico, in particular, are more likely than other groups to suffer from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver and to be arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, according to a 1982 study for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

One oft-cited study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1988 found that nearly 37% of Mexican males living in the United States said that they drank as many as six drinks at a sitting, although another study found that 20% of the group does not drink at all. In Los Angeles County, Latinos account for between 48% and 49% of the arrests for driving under the influence, although they represent only 38% of the population, according to Mora.

Yet, according to research done for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, liquor stores and advertising such as alcohol-oriented billboards occur in Latino communities at as much as five times the rate as in Anglo communities. And Mora contends that much of that advertising distorts the impact of heavy drinking on health.

A $100,000 county-funded survey done for Flores’ group found concentrations of billboards, most in Spanish, along San Fernando Road at Paxton Street and at the intersection with Van Nuys Boulevard. A billboard for Corona beer that was at Van Nuys Boulevard and Pierce Street, for example, portrayed the brand as the “pillar of society.” Beer companies also get their name displayed by sponsoring community festivals, such as the Cinco de Mayo celebration last year in San Fernando Park, and adult and youth soccer and baseball leagues.

Nationally, alcohol consumption among Latinos and blacks has been on the rise in recent years while it has dropped among Anglos, experts said.

In the past, they said, the problems were dealt with by treating and educating individuals. Now, however, the prevailing theory is that a communitywide prevention approach is needed.

“We have come to the conclusion that we have to . . . put together a grass-roots organization to deal with this problem,” Flores said. “The experts in the field are very quick to tell you that if any substantial change is going to take place, it is going to have to be rooted in community action.”

Mora said this so-called environmental approach to preventing alcohol-related problems involves increasing the cost and reducing the availability of alcoholic beverages, clamping down on outlets that sell to minors and “monitoring . . . the marketing techniques used to reach high-risk target groups” such as Latino males.

She said most Latino communities, however, have not participated in such efforts and that little state or federal money is available to educate or organize them. In that respect, San Fernando and Pacoima, where community leaders have been working to reduce alcohol-related problems for at least five years, are far ahead of other places.

“I don’t know of any Latino community as well organized as the northeast Valley,” Mora said.

The beer industry, however, rejects the arguments of those urging an environmental approach. Advertising has never been shown to increase consumption, but merely to promote the use of one brand over another, said Jeff Becker, vice president of alcohol issues for the Beer Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

He said efforts to limit liquor outlets, to control the sale of certain products, such as fortified wines, or to raise prices to control beer or wine drinking have also proved ineffective.

“They’re saying that putting restrictions on products will solve the problem . . . and we’re saying that alcohol problems have been going down for five to seven years and that that is done by providing information to people to help them make informed decisions,” Becker said.

Problem drinkers, he said, do not limit their consumption of alcohol because the price of beer, for example, goes up. Instead they switch to a stronger and cheaper product.

Pacoima community activist Augustine Maldonado said he used to believe that alcohol abuse problems, like drug addiction, could be solved by treating individuals. But, he said, he has since changed his mind.

“For years and years we’ve been focusing on the individual, that they’re the problem, and to change from that isn’t that simple” said Maldonado, one of the leaders in the efforts of the Pacoima Coordinating Council to halt the proliferation of alcohol outlets in that community.

But, he said, his organization’s successes have persuaded him. After making progress on drugs and gang-related problems at local housing projects, the organization in 1988 turned its resources to capping the number of liquor stores and bars in the area and pressing those already in business to clean up their operations.

Several years ago, the Greater San Fernando Valley Ministers Alliance and a group of homeowners known as Focus ‘90s also began lobbying for limits on alcohol licenses and for a crackdown on liquor stores that allowed drug sales near their stores.

“We approached some of the liquor stores and they did something about it and that helped a lot,” said Bill McMillen, president of the Hansen Hills Homeowners Assn. and a member of Focus ‘90s. “We’ve done a lot of things over here to make things better.”

Community leaders have begun attending the permit hearings for liquor stores that the city of Los Angeles began requiring in 1985. Before that date, liquor stores and other retail alcohol outlets only had to get a state Department of Alcohol Beverage Control license.

City Zoning Administrator Jon Perica said his office considers the concentration of outlets, the crime rate in the area and testimony from neighbors and elected officials when deciding whether to issue a use permit. The city also frequently attaches various conditions to the permit that restrict the hours of operation or prohibit liquor stores or markets from selling individual cans of beer.

Since 1983, the state has issued 19 new licenses in the Pacoima area and nine in the city of San Fernando, according to Jim Smith, district administrator for the state ABC. Maldonado and others, however, believe that no new licenses should have been issued.

“My position was, why add more to what is there already?” Maldonado said. “They talk in terms of their rights, but what about our rights? It’s our community.”

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, which for many years had the dubious reputation of dealing with the most drunk-driving accidents of any of the city’s 18 police divisions, joined the crackdown on alcohol about two years ago.

Foothill officers mounted stings in which underage informants sought to buy alcohol and investigators looked for the slightest infraction of ABC rules. They also organized monthly enforcement efforts aimed at drunk driving.

Police Capt. Tim McBride said the result was a 15% drop in major-injury accidents last year that came after an 8% decline the year before. He said the police work was effective, but he also praised the community efforts.

“You put all of these things together and it lets people know that it’s not just the cops going out on their own,” he said.

Despite the progress in the area, much more needs to be done, activists said. A survey conducted by Flores’ group found that half of the residents think the area has too many bars and liquor stores, too much crime and not enough safe parks. It also found that only 32% knew the legal blood-alcohol limit was 0.08%.

Dr. Jose Hernandez, a member of the San Fernando City Council and chairman of the Urban Studies and Planning Department at Cal State Northridge, said the survey and the conference are important steps toward mounting an educational campaign. Then markets and liquor stores must be persuaded to work with the community to deal with these issues.

“The goals and objectives of businesses are identical to the goals and objectives of the community,” he said. “They have to get together and see if they can work out something. If they are going to ignore each other, then there’s going to be confrontations.”