This Back Bay store was caught selling alcohol to more than 120 minors
Boston officials caught more than 120 minors with alcohol purchased from the Quality Mart in Back Bay during St. Patrick’s Day weekend.
The Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) rang in the holiday weekend by kicking off its “Operation Safe Spring” campaign, a statewide effort to crack down on underage drinking. Their first stop was Quality Mart, a convenience story in Back Bay, where officials confiscated 122 fake IDs, 49 cases of beer, and 134 bottles of alcoholic beverages, according to a press release. The majority of buyers were college students who were 18 to 20 years old.
“Stepped-up monitoring and enforcement can save lives and prevent tragedies before they happen,” State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg said in the release.
According to the release, ABCC officials forced enforcement efforts on stores with a reputation for selling to minors with fake IDs. Quality Mart certainly falls under this category: The store was satirized in Boston University’s Bunion for its lenient fake ID policies.
In addition to monitoring stores like Quality Mart, investigators spent St. Patrick’s Day weekend enforcing underage drinking laws at bars and pubs across the city.
Quality Mart will be summoned to a hearing before the commission to address charges related to selling alcohol to underage buyers. The store did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
