Back to school, bartenders.

• Author: Bowers, Barbara
• Position: Alaska's compliance with federally mandated alcohol-server training

To keep federal highway funds, Alaska will comply with mandatory alcohol-server training.

If the feds have their way, it won't be enough just to be a mixologist. Bartenders will have to be one part biologist, one part chemist, one part psychologist and one part pharmacist. Besides knowing what's in a Long Island Ice Tea, they'll have to know how it passes through your pyloric valve, the symptoms of its effect on your brain, and they'll need to be alert to your moody, anxious moments.

If the bartender's truly a fine blend of the above "ists," he'll find out if you're taking Tagamet or other medication for ulcers that might double the effect of alcohol.

That's a tall order. But consider the alternative: The amount of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) in your body used to measure legal intoxication will be reduced from .10 percent to .08 percent. Doesn't sound like much ... until you find out a bottle of wine, split with your spouse at dinner, puts you at risk of drunk driving.

Just a half bottle of wine.

The National Transportation Safety Board intends to cut off highway funding to states that don't adopt five of six measures that it believes will reduce the number of drunken drivers and help curb the misuse of alcohol. Alaska already complies with four. Now the state has to pick its poison from one of the other two measures: mandatory alcohol server training or .08 percent BAC.

"I don't like the federal government telling me what to do any more than the next person," says Carol Wilson, executive director of CHARR, a statewide association of managers and owners of cabarets, hotels, restaurants and retail businesses. "Legalizing .08 percent BAC will kill the restaurant and bar business.

"Responsible drinkers will be affected more than drunk drivers, so we'll throw our efforts behind statewide, mandatory alcohol-server training rather than lose highway funding," Wilson notes.

In Anchorage, alcohol server-training is already mandatory. Anyone who serves alcohol to the public must take a course that teaches everything from the clinical effects of alcohol to how to spot fake IDs. Bartenders. Liquor store sales clerks. Waiters. Waitresses. There are several programs to choose from, but CHARR's program, Techniques of Alcohol Management (TAM), co-sponsored by the Anchorage Restaurant and Beverage Association, has trained the largest number of people, about 10,000.

Alaska was the second state to recognize the need for alcohol-server training. Michigan...