Neo-Prohibitionists

Slate’s Anti-Alcohol Hatchet Job

August 29, 2011

I used to think of Slate’s online magazine as cutting edge stuff, but lately their coverage, at least of things I know something about, shows them to be staunchly conservative. Given that they’re owned by the Washington Post, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. Today an article by William Saletan on the web titlebar [...]

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Beware The Bogeyman Of Beer, He’s After Your Kids

June 24, 2011

In a particularly ugly display of shameless greed and naked propaganda, the Marin Institute is using summer scare tactics to fuel their fund-raising efforts. Essentially their reasoning goes as follows. The summer advertising for sweet, malt-based beverages that come in colorful packages — like Four Loko, Jooce, Sparks, Blast, etc. — is “targeting” your children [...]

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The Politics Of Never Being Satisfied

June 3, 2011

The anti-alcohol Marin Institute had a little item in one of their e-mail missives a few days ago, reporting on the news that Anheuser-Busch InBev announced that they would be lowering the alcohol content of their Tilt from 12% a.b.v. to 8%. You’d think that the anti-alcohol groups that have been whining about these drinks [...]

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Graduation & Prom Drinking

May 4, 2011

Apparently prom season and graduation time is coming up, because the scary statistics that always accompany this time of year are also starting to appear. Now before the angry comments start filling my queue, I’m not encouraging drinking at either, and especially not drinking and driving, no matter what the occasion. There are, however, some [...]

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The Science Of Manipulation: New Study Comparing Underage Drinking Riddled With Problems

April 28, 2011

Join Together and the Partnership For a Drugfree America yesterday sent out an item in their e-mail blast entitled Teens Who Drink with Adult Supervision Have More Drinking Problems, Study Finds. Alarming, right? Likewise, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s went even farther with this misleading headline: UW study: Teens don’t need parents as ‘drinking buddies’. But do [...]

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UK Gov’t Statistics On Women Drinking Found To Be Wrong

April 19, 2011

For the second time in a few years, a UK Government agency has admitted to making a mistake regarding statistics used in the creation and furtherance of alcohol policy. The first, in 2007, was when the UK’s Department of Health revealed that the definition of a hazardous drinker, that is what the safe limits of [...]

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When Science Becomes Propaganda: The Caffeine & Alcohol Conundrum

April 18, 2011

Ugh. To me there’s nothing worse than junk science, especially when it’s in the service of an agenda. And that’s how this latest “study” in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research comes across. The title of the “study” is Effects of Energy Drinks Mixed with Alcohol on Behavioral Control: Risks for College Students Consuming [...]

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The Brain and Alcohol Research Project

April 17, 2011

Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut, at the end of March released some preliminary results after three years of a five-year study entitled the Brain and Alcohol Research Project. In a press release entitled What Students’ Brains Have Told Us about the Effects of Binge Drinking, they revealed the following: Young adults who binge drink tend [...]

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Old Enough To Fight, Old Enough For Beer

April 13, 2011

You probably already saw that Alaska Republican state representative Bob Lynn, a Vietnam vet from Anchorage, is proposing changing his state’s law to allow active duty servicemen to drink as well as die for their country. Seems reasonable enough, but it puts at risk millions of dollars in federal highway funding, because the national minimum [...]

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Archie Comics Tapped To Teach Kids About Underage Drinking

March 22, 2011

The neo-prohibitionist organization MADD today sent out a press release announcing that they’ve partnered with Archie Comics “to raise awareness about underage drinking.” The new issue of Double Digest #217 hits the comic book stores tomorrow, and features an 8-page story entitled The Madd Cowboy of Riverdale High. Below are a few sample pages. The [...]

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More Absurdity From The Lunatic Fringe

March 7, 2011

In another missive from the increasingly well-named Professor David Nutt, today in the UK Guardian he announed that There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption and then proceeded to claim that the reasons he believes that “the idea that drinking small amounts of alcohol will do you no harm is [...]

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Wisconsin Historian Compares Current State Politics To Prohibition

March 6, 2011

Here’s an interesting op-ed piece by Wisconsin historian John Gurda entitled Smashing ‘Demon Government’ in which he examines the many parallels between the current political climate in his state and the temperance movement that led to Prohibition. Thanks to Wisconsin Bulletin reader Jason H. for sending me the link. Subtitled “Walker’s small-government zeal resembles that [...]

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Former MADD Chapter President Caught Driving Drunk

February 25, 2011

I don’t want to make light of this, or even make too much out of it, because everyone makes mistakes. Hell, even the head of the OLCC resigned after getting a DUI in April 2006. But I still feel it has to be pointed out (and thanks to Rob for the tip). The Gainesville Sun [...]

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Marin Institute Attacks State Beer Taxes … Again

February 16, 2011

Daniel Defoe observed in 1726 that nothing was more certain than death and taxes, and sadly, that still holds true nearly three centuries later. It seems more likely that we’ll lick that immortality problem before taxes ever become a thing of the past. And few taxes are more certain to be under attack than alcohol [...]

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When Did Valentine’s Day Become A Drinking Holiday?

February 11, 2011

This just struck me as odd. The now neo-prohibitionist MADD is urging people to give the gift of being a designated driver for Valentine’s Day. I certainly think it’s always a good idea to have a DD, but associating this idea with Valentine’s Day, one of the few remaining non-drinking holidays, seems opportunistic in the [...]

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When Zero Tolerance Makes Zero Sense

February 1, 2011

There was a little item in the Brickbats section of Reason magazine for February about a high school cheerleader in Ohio who was suspended for two games. Why, you may ask? Because school officials found a photo of her on Facebook holding a beer at a family wedding. According to her own Mother, she wasn’t [...]

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