An attempt to smuggle 10 mickeys of vodka into Old Crow on an Air North flight was quashed by the Whitehorse RCMP Tuesday.

The booze was hidden inside two bags of dog food.

Whitehorse RCMP learned about the illegal shipment to Canada's most northwesterly village from a tip.

Police seized the bottles from an Air North hangar before the vodka could reach Old Crow. The community has had a ban on the possession, sale and consumption and transportation of liquor since 1991.

It is unusual to seize a shipment before it gets to Old Crow, Const. Scott Wessell from the village's three-person RCMP detachment said today.

Normally, police confiscate alcohol after it has reached the village of 265 people.

Wessell said the RCMP receive a number of alcohol-related calls, even though booze has been banned for almost 15 years.

Neena Elsie Hume, 55, is charged with one count of unlawfully sending liquor to a place where liquor may not be lawfully kept in relation to the booze found in the dog food.

There is no specified fine for such an offence. Hume, a resident of Old Crow, will have to appear in court on May 17 to have the matter sorted out.

Since the incident, Lorraine Peter, the NDP MLA for Old Crow Vuntut Gwitchin, is calling on the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation to review its liquor prohibition regulations to see if they should be strengthened to meet the current needs of the people.

Wessell said criminal offences related to alcohol in Old Crow, such as assault and impaired driving, have gone down by 40 per cent. Instead, there have been more charges under the territorial Liquor Act.

That is because over the last few years, the RCMP have been working with community members to reduce the number of criminal offences.

'We were looking at ways to assist the community with ways to improve its health and wellness,' said Wessell.

For police, it has meant stepping up efforts to prevent liquor from coming in and dealing with it when it gets there by seizing alcohol when they find out about it.

'We try to get it before it starts to be consumed,' said Wessell, who has worked in Old Crow for almost two years.

Wessell says alcoholism has become a more talked-about issue within the community and 'the issues are being dealt with.'

The Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation is offering health programs to village residents.

Ideally, the village would like to have its own treatment facility, said Peter.

'But where do we get the money for that?' she asked.

The community usually has an alcohol and drug counsellor, but many people have to leave the village to get the help they need.

Alcohol was first introduced to the Vuntut Gwitchin, who live above the Arctic Circle, in 1960. Thirty years later, people wanted it banned, and in 1991, it was.

'It took a lot of soul-searching on behalf of the community to go dry in the first place,' Peter said today.

'But just because my community is dry doesn't mean we don't have alcohol-related problems. Like every other community in the Yukon, we still have a problem.'

Although Peter would like to see an alcohol treatment facility in her community, she recognizes that even if all the programming was in place, the onus for change has to come from the individual.

'I can't say somebody else has an alcohol problem and go over there and say how can we fix you. It's the other way around,' she said. 'It's a personal responsibility. I can't say, Sober up.' That would be an uphill battle.'

Peter said once a person chooses to cope with his or her addiction, mechanisms should be there to support that individual.

While Old Crow still has its alcohol problems, the abuse is less visible today, she said.

'You don't see somebody stumbling down the road like we used to 20 years ago.'

Old Crow's decision to ban alcohol was reenforced after their former MLA, the Yukon Party's Johnny Abel, and his five-year old grandson drowned on a canoeing trip in 1995.

Abel had a blood alcohol level of 0.26 per cent.