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Military

Marine Corps Bases To Limit Alcohol Sales

The Marine Corps will start limiting the hours alcohol can be sold at base exchanges, and will altogether ban the sale of booze at Marine Marts near barracks, according to a USMC memo obtained by Stars and Stripes.

The new hours will mean liquor can only be sold at Marine Corps exchanges between the hours of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. In addition, the new rules...

...will limit to 10 percent the amount of retail floor space that can be devoted to alcohol sales in stores that are not designated as package stores, and will limit alcohol promotions and marketing on base.

The move by the Marine Corps echos the recent decision by Navy officials to revise alcohol sales policies in Navy exchanges.

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Chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, announced the booze policy as part of several new initiatives to reduce sexual assault in the Navy.

David Jernigan, Johns Hopkins University's director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, told The Associated Press limiting alcohol sales is a step in the right direction.

"It's not going to fix everything, but it is a real step in the right direction. Historically, the military, as elsewhere, has viewed these problems as individual problems to be dealt with by identifying the individual with the problem. While that's important, the research shows it's much more effective actually to look at it as a population problem and to deal with things that are affecting everybody across the population."