GfK Roper Youth Report Examines Influences on Youth Decisions about Drinking

January 5, 2014 By Jay Brooks

underage-drinking
I mentioned this recent study in another post, but it’s worth highlighting all on its own, especially because it contradicts much of the prohibitionist propaganda about how awful it is for kids to see alcohol advertising and how it corrupts their immature little minds, turning them into raging alcoholics. GfK Roper Consulting, which characterizes itself as “one of the world’s leading research companies,” recently released its annual Youth Report, Influences on Youth Decisions about Drinking. Having conducted the same survey since 1991, they note that parents have the most influence on whether or not kids drink before they’re 21. And not only has that been the case for over twenty years, but it’s actually been increasing steadily since that time, up 33% (one-third). During that entire time, advertising has been at or near the bottom the entire time, and is currently at a mere 1%, down 80% from when it was 5% in 1991. This while at the same time, prohibitionists have been complaining about the danger of underage minors just seeing advertisements for alcohol, and doing everything in their power to limit them to the supposed times when kids won’t see them, which is, of course, never.

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Parents, as has been the case since they began conducting the survey, are the biggest influence by a wide margin. But prohibitionists have even managed to make it illegal in some states for parents to educate their own kids about alcohol, believing that they can do a better job with such programs, in California at least, as Red Ribbon Days and making up scenarios in high schools where one of their fellow students has been killed in order to scare them into not drinking, putting them through the very real emotional pain of dealing with a killed friend.

Second only to parents are best friends, but even their influence plummeted beginning in 2008, and is now only about 8%. So even peer pressure is waning. Third used to be teachers, but they’ve dropped below all media (defined as TV, radio, magazines, and Internet). In fact, all influence other than parents and friends are 2% or less, making them almost statistically irrelevant.

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Going on all during this same time period from 1991 to the present, has been a slow but steady decline in the overall amount of alcohol people are drinking. So not only has the advertising become less effective, especially as younger generations are more media savvy, but people and kids are drinking less and less. But it’s harder to raise money from donations if things are improving from these anti-alcohol organizations’ point of view. So what should be good news like this is virtually ignored by them. Good luck trying to find anything about this survey on their websites. If they really cared about stopping underage drinking or keeping drunks off the road you’d think they’d be arming parents with the tools they need to educate their children about responsible alcohol consumption, but actions speak much louder than words, and their actions are all about sounding alarm bells and raising money.

Ivory Tower Thinking

January 5, 2014 By Jay Brooks

The proverbial ivory tower of academia, where some intellectuals live and work in an insulated world separate from the real world, was never more on display than in this “study” about which alcohol brands are mentioned most often in popular songs. Conducted by Boston University and Johns Hopkins, their survey of popular music, Alcohol Brand References in U.S. Popular Music, 2009–2011, was published in the December issue of the journal Substance Use & Misuse. The researchers looked at the Billboard charts in four music types — Urban, Pop, Country, and Rock. Here’s the abstract:

This study aimed to assess the prevalence and context of alcohol brand references in popular music. Billboard Magazine year-end charts from 2009 to 2011 were used to identify the most popular songs in four genres: Urban, Pop, Country, and Rock. Of the 720 songs, 23% included an alcohol mention, and 6.4% included an alcohol brand mention. Songs classified as Urban had the highest percentage of alcohol mentions and alcohol brand mentions. The context associated with alcohol brand mentions was almost uniformly positive or neutral. Public health efforts may be necessary to reduce youth exposure to these positive messages about alcohol use.

Because most journals require you to pay large sums to read them (or be an academic yourself), most of the information about this one comes from an article about the study, Music Artists Love to Sing About These 4 Alcohol Brands, which appeared on Futurity, a website covering “research news from top universities.” In it, the researchers reveal how out-of-touch they are with their subject. Of the more than one-thousand alcohol labels sold today, they noted, “only four brands show up often in the lyrics of popular songs.” Those four were Hennessy, Grey Goose, Jack Daniel’s and Patron; a cognac, vodka, tequila and whiskey. “They accounted for more than half of the alcohol brands named in songs from Billboard’s most popular song lists in 2009, 2010, and 2011.” Here’s the insights from one of the researchers.

“You would expect there would be hundreds of brands that are randomly mentioned,” says Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University’s School of Public Health. “But we found that those top four accounted for 52 percent of all the brand mentions. That can’t be coincidental.”

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Are you sure?

Apparently, they also found that “alcohol use was portrayed as overwhelmingly positive in lyrics, with negative consequences almost never referred to.” I don’t think they listened to enough country music which, traditionally at least, was all about the consequences of drinking too much. But all kidding aside, why would a singer sing about any negative aspects of drinking? They’re not PSAs. The goal of pop music is to entertain, period. It’s not to educate or warn kids about the dangers of overindulging. They also seem worried because — gasp — kids also listen to the same music as adults, which the researchers found “alarming” because in their mind that meant the music was “promoting” drinking.

But after all that fretting, professor Michael Siegel admits that no “causal connection” was found between the music actual consumption, stating “further research is needed.” He also mentions that they also found that some of the artists — gasp — had sponsorship deals with some of the alcohol brands. To the researchers, that means that listeners are being marketed to, because in the ivory tower that simply has “to be recognized as marketing, not random chance.”

This so-called “study” examined (really, examined? They just listened to some music, didn’t they?) 720 songs. Of those, less than one-quarter (23.2%, or 167) mentioned alcohol. And just 6.4% (or 46 songs) dropped the name of a specific brand of alcohol, of which 51.6% mentioned one of the top four brands; Hennessy, Grey Goose, Jack Daniel’s and Patron. Of the four music genres they surveyed, alcohol was mentioned most often in “so-called urban songs (rap, hip-hop, and R&B, with 37.7 percent), followed by country (21.8 percent), and pop (14.9 percent).” They further discovered that “Tequila, cognac, vodka, and champagne brands appeared more prevalently in urban music (R&B, hip-hop, and rap), while whiskey and beer brands were more common in country or pop music. Surprisingly, there was no alcohol referred to in the rock-genre music examined.” Maybe that was Christian rock, because I can name more than a few rock and roll songs about beer alone, but maybe they’re not popular right now.

Is anyone not living in the clouds surprised by that? But let’s take a closer look at reality regarding these brands. Hennessey is hands down the best-selling brand of cognac in not just the U.S., but worldwide. Likewise, Grey Goose is the best-selling vodka. Jack Daniel’s is the best-selling American whiskey worldwide, too. At this point, you probably won’t be too shocked to learn that Patrón is the biggest selling ultra-premium tequila in the US. So when the researchers say it “can’t be coincidental” that “those top four accounted for 52 percent of all the brand mentions,” it’s not, but it’s not a conspiracy, either. They’re each the most popular brands of their type, which is the more logical reason why they’re the ones most often mentioned in songs. You don’t need a slide rule to figure that out.

As long ago as when I worked for BevMo, and saw sales figures for spirits on occasion, those were popular brands, especially among the same demographic as might listen to urban music. The brands were, and most likely still are, status symbols in some communities, which would also account for their popularity in song lyrics. That’s the reason these companies are looking for sponsorship opportunities with musicians and music events, not the other way around.

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The researchers, showing just how biased their thinking is, claim that their concern over advertising stems from a belief that “[a]t least 14 long-term studies have found that exposure to alcohol marketing in the mass media increases the likelihood that young people will start drinking, or if already drinking, consume more.” And yet a recent GfK Roper Youth Report on the Influences on Youth Decisions about Drinking clearly shows that since at least 1991, advertising is at the very bottom of the reasons that influence kids to drink, age 13-20, accounting for just 1%, though for all media (defined as a including TV, radio, magazines, and Internet) it’s twice that, but of course that’s still only 2%. It’s hardly the scourge that the prohibitionists continue to insist it is.

It’s hard to see this as anything more than researchers out of touch with the real world of music or alcohol, making pronouncements from their ivory tower without really understanding the context of what they’re commenting on, mis-analyzing the results as a consequence. For example, professor Siegel suggests that “[o]ne intervention would be to teach young people ‘media literacy skills’ that would educate them about marketing techniques.” That’s rich, considering most young people are probably far more media savvy than the average college professor.

But beyond that, the idea that music made by and for adults, but also listened to by children, is rarely, if ever, the danger it’s believed to be. Or that adults singing about adult situations, in this case alcohol, for adults to listen to should not be permitted to do so on the off-chance that kids might hear it too. But that’s typical of the ridiculous lengths and logic to which the prohibitionists will go in promoting their agenda with junk science. This type of thinking suggests that they believe there should be two worlds, one that’s exclusively adult, walled off completely lest the kiddies be corrupted by seeing and hearing adult entertainment. That advertising is so often the bogeyman, despite it having so little actual influence, has more to do with the strategy that prohibitionists have employed since the day after prohibition was repealed. Every generation, they claim, is being corrupted and ruined by alcohol advertising. And yet, each generation seems to turn out just fine, don’t they? Those same youth from the previous generation grew up to become among the next generation of researchers claiming how this next group of kids will be ruined by being advertised to by alcohol companies, and each time they miss the irony that they, too, grew up seeing alcohol advertising, as well. Maybe it’s the air up in their ivory tower that makes them so forgetful, that along with being detached from reality. Can I assume Michael Bolton, Kenny G and Barry Manilow are playing on the radio?

Moderation Is Better Than Abstinence

January 2, 2014 By Jay Brooks

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I’ve long believed that AA, while obviously effective for some, is not the only way to treat problem drinking. Especially given that drinking moderately can increase one’s longevity over those who abstain, I’ve always believed that a better goal would be to take people who can’t moderate their drinking and teach them how to do just that. That’s an approach often taken in other countries, but is one that can’t even be discussed here in the U.S. without an uproar from the addiction community and the anti-alcohol wingnuts. Several years ago, I wrote about this in a long post entitled Tipping The Sacred Cows Of Addiction. And Adi Jaffe, Ph.D. echoed the same sentiment in All About Addiction, a piece for Psychology Today.

The New York Times published an op-ed piece on New Year’s Day entitled Cold Turkey Isn’t the Only Route. In it, author Gabrielle Glaser also noted how entrenched Americans are in abstinence as the only cure for alcoholism.

The cold-turkey approach is deeply rooted in the United States, embraced by doctors, the multibillion-dollar treatment industry and popular culture. For nearly 80 years, our approach to drinking problems has been inspired by the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Developed in the 1930s by men who were “chronic inebriates,” the A.A. program offers a single path to recovery: abstinence, surrendering one’s ego and accepting one’s “powerlessness” over alcohol.

Despite the fact that studies have shown that AA doesn’t work, it’s undoubtedly the dominant treatment method in America. So much so, that most people do in fact believe that if you’re an alcoholic you can never ever touch a drop of alcohol for the rest of your life. But the obvious problem with that point of view is that it suggests that a cure is not only difficult but actually impossible. Because learning to deny yourself something you have trouble moderating is hardly a cure. It’s a band-aid at best that may remove some of the negative aspects of one’s drinking problem, but being based on the concept of “powerlessness” means not only giving up on yourself but it actually removes any possibility of real help. It’s a bad bargain, in my opinion. But that’s where the money is, sad to say. Addiction clinics, retreats, programs, along with insurance companies, etc. don’t make their money by curing people, they make money by treating them. And if the treatment lasts the rest of their lives, then that’s the best thing for the bottom line.

Despite the dominance of abstinence-based treatments, there are a growing number of alternatives, apparently, including Moderation Management, Moderate Drinking and others. Amazon now lists many books claiming to help people achieve moderate drinking, which is encouraging.

But I love her conclusion. “We don’t treat cancer, depression or asthma with the same tools we used in 1935. We need to get away from the one-size-fits-all approach to drinking problems.” Indeed, A.A. has changed little since its inception, while our understanding of addiction, its underlying causes and the benefits of moderate drinking have all grown immeasurably. It would be great if as a society we could eradicate alcoholism, but we can’t do that by simply burying our heads in the sand and just removing alcohol from the equation. If prohibition taught us anything, it’s that such an approach is doomed to fail. It’s time to change the goal from abstinence, a nation of teetotalers, to a society filled with only moderate drinkers. That would certainly make the world a better place.

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Good News From Monitoring The Future

December 31, 2013 By Jay Brooks

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Here’s one story you won’t likely see spread by Alcohol Justice or any of the other prohibitionist organizations. Since 1975, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has done a survey of “drug, alcohol, and cigarette use and related attitudes among adolescent students nationwide.” This year, “45,449 students from 395 public and private schools participated” in the annual Monitoring the Future survey, which is conducted by the University of Michigan.

This year’s findings, at least in regards to alcohol, are encouraging, according to the survey’s authors, as detailed in their Monitoring the Future Survey, Monitoring the Future Survey, Overview of Findings 2013.

5-year trends continue to show significant decreases in alcohol use among all grades and across nearly all prevalence periods. For example, from 2008 to 2013, current use of alcohol declined from 15.9% to 10.2% among 8th graders, from 28.8% to 25.7% among 10th graders, and from 43.1% to 39.2% among 12th graders. From 2012 to 2013, decreases were observed in binge use of alcohol (defined as five or more drinks in a row in the last 2 weeks) among 10th graders, with a 5-year trend showing a significant decrease in all three grades.

That, in fact, has been the trend over the past few years.

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They’re more concerned about the use of prescription drugs among our nation’s youth, along with pot and smoking tobacco in a hookah, all of which are on the rise. But I don’t hear the prohibitionists trying to remove prescription drugs from the marketplace on the off chance kids could get their hands on them. I haven’t heard them trying to restrict Viagra or other legal drug ads because kids might see them, or restrict the displays and shelves of drugs because the kiddies might walk by and see them, and in seeing them they would undoubtedly want them, not being able to help themselves. It sounds silly doesn’t it, but that’s the general argument the prohibitionists use to argue against beer ads and beer on store shelves where children might see them.

But while they’ve been incessantly claiming beer ads make kids start drinking and responsibility efforts by the alcohol companies don’t work and all of us in the beer world are the spawn of satan, kids have been drinking less and less, year after year. You’d think that it would be cause for celebration by the groups that are working tirelessly to punish the alcohol companies for their wickedness and claim to want to put a stop to underage drinking. But that might put a dent in their fundraising efforts, so that, I believe, is why you’ll never see a positive story from a prohibitionist organization.

Watchdog’s Department of Redundancy Department

December 30, 2013 By Jay Brooks

While I don’t think too much about what I post on Twitter, lots of companies do think about their Twitter frequency, content, timing, etc. How much is the right amount? How much is too much? Organizations should, and usually do, give this careful consideration. Last year, Track Social conducted a study to determine the sweet spot entitled Optimizing Twitter Engagement – Part 2: How Frequently to Tweet. They determined that 2-5 tweets per day is best to get a response from your followers. Less than that and they forget about you, more than that and they start to tune out. Looking at my own Twitterstream, I tend to tweet 4-6 times a day, usually no more than 10; though sometimes I tweet more when I’m traveling.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that I see an awful lot of tweets from the prohibitionists at Alcohol Justice, usually with a great deal of repetition. I started noticing that I keep seeing the same twitpic day after day, the same plea for money day after day and the same propaganda day after day. For example, recently I was annoyed by one of their tweets, and considered doing a post about it, but then changed my mind. But I noticed I saw it again, and then again, and then again today. It turns out they first tweeted the one below every single day since December 17, which was the first time, until today. That’s fourteen times in two weeks. Exactly the same every time, as below. They could change the wording, change it up, make it at least appear fresh, but nope, they just retweet it over and over again, as is.

What originally annoyed me is that clicking on the link takes you to a story, Watchdog Group Slams Alcohol “Social Responsibility” Campaigns. The “watchdog” doing the slamming is none other than Alcohol Justice. So in effect, every day they’re saying hey, look at this information about what a watchdog group is saying as if it’s from an objective, unbiased source. But what they’re really saying is: “hey check out this study by us that we got someone else to post without questioning anything.” It feels dishonest at best. There’s nothing about it that’s not slimy and self-referential, more of the circle jerk of prohibitionist propaganda. They could have tweeted that there’s a story about their own study or something to the effect that here’s an article by one of our own, or at least own the information. But that would be honest, something the watchdog holding big alcohol accountable has a hard time doing themselves.

But as this sank in, I also noticed I’ve been seeing lots of repetition. Beating a dead horse seems to be part of the S.O.P., a policy decision. As far as the amount of tweets, looking at the last ten days, Alcohol Justice tweeted 369 times, not including RT’s. That’s an average of almost 37 tweets per day. As of 2:30 p.m. PST, they’ve tweeted 70 times today! That would push the average to nearly forty tweets per day.

Beyond the insane number, it’s the repetition that’s so amazing. There appears to be a calculated policy of tweeting the exact same tweets every day for weeks on end. Just seeing the same graphics tweeted every day makes that point. Take a cursory glance down their twitterstream and you’ll see the same photo and language over and over and over again. The graphic for this tweet is a bottle of Absolut in a rainbow pattern and the text “Absolut Pride,” making me wonder if perhaps they’re also subtly trying to appeal to homophobics, too. Otherwise, what was the point of choosing that particular ad to use in a post about social responsibility? Personally, I like this colorful neon beer bottle sign better. But then, I generally prefer beer.

And then there’s donations, pleas for which are seemingly never-ending. During the month of December, so far, they’ve asked followers for money 57 times, or an average of almost twice a day.

The amount of redundancy in the average day’s Twitter feed by Alcohol Justice reminds me of an old Monty Python bit with a government agency called the “Department of Redundancy Department.” Can their nearly 16,000 followers really welcome that much repetition in the information they’re sending out on a daily basis? Or can it be possible they think so little of those followers that they believe that they need to keep telling them the same things over and again in the hopes that it sinks in eventually?

The Man With The Golden Liver

December 26, 2013 By Jay Brooks

Today’s infographic is an odd one, entitled The Man With the Golden Liver. It’s a serious (as far as I can tell) review of the fourteen James Bond books written by Ian Fleming, examining how much alcohol the fictional character James Bond drank. The result of their work (reading novels, mostly) was published in BMJ, the British Medical Journal, under the title Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor? Here’s what they found:

Results After exclusion of days when Bond was unable to drink, his weekly alcohol consumption was 92 units a week, over four times the recommended amount. His maximum daily consumption was 49.8 units. He had only 12.5 alcohol free days out of 87.5 days on which he was able to drink.
Conclusions James Bond’s level of alcohol intake puts him at high risk of multiple alcohol related diseases and an early death. The level of functioning as displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental, and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol. We advise an immediate referral for further assessment and treatment, a reduction in alcohol consumption to safe levels, and suspect that the famous catchphrase “shaken, not stirred” could be because of alcohol induced tremor affecting his hands.

So they undertook the examination of the drinking habits of a fictional character and concluded he was a high risk drinker, worrying what consequences might befall him. I’d laugh my head off if the goal didn’t appear to be to warn others not to follow his example and drink too much. Has their been a problem with copycats pretending to be British superspies and binge drinking in the process? And that’s been since 1953, when the first book was published. So it’s been sixty years. You think we’d have seen this epidemic by now. If anything, based on the fact that no one reads books anymore, this has to be a waning problem, if indeed it as ever one to begin with.

To be fair, a number of years ago I did something similar, looking through the Fleming novels for instances when 007 drank beer, which I detailed in a post called James Bond’s Beer. But my goal was entertainment, not science, and I had no aspirations to warm people about unhealthy behavior in a character who wasn’t real. The “scientists” who undertook this “study” even have the cojones to say that “the author Ian Fleming died aged 56 of heart disease after a life notable for alcohol and tobacco excess,” suggesting a connection between the author and his fictional creation. Fleming himself always said that he’d based 007 on a Serbian field agent, Dušan Popov, although there are plenty of other contenders.

Another ridiculous caution is their finding that based on their analysis of Bond’s consumption he would have frequently drove a car with a BAC of 0.08 or above, which they note is above the legal limit in the UK. Except that the last Bond work that Fleming wrote was published in 1966. That’s one full year before the UK passed the Road Safety Act, imposing a BAC percentage. So if we’re continuing this absurd line of reasoning, it doesn’t even work by their own standards. At any rate, it’s an interesting infographic, I could just do without the proselytizing.

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Click here to see the infographic full size.

Original Lite Beer Can Coming Back

December 21, 2013 By Jay Brooks

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These always give me a chuckle. Whenever sales are flagging, one of the strategies employed by the bigger beer companies to reverse their fortunes is to change the packaging. Earlier this month, Miller sent out a press release, “Celebrate Miller Time with the Light Beer that Started It All.” They’re bringing back the original can design for Miller Lite, their unnatural abomination of a diet beer. My thoughts on low-calorie light beer are very opinionated, and none too positive, for example read Disrespecting Low-Calorie Light Beer and No Defense For Light Beer.

MILLER LITE ORIGINAL LITE CAN

Here’s the press release:

The Original Lite Can features the familiar images of hops, barley and the words “a fine pilsner beer,” which reinforce the high quality ingredients and the unique brewing process that consumers have enjoyed for generations.
“There was a time when all that existed was heavy beer that weighed you down,” said Elina Vives, marketing director for Miller Lite. “The launch of Miller Lite broke this category convention and offered beer drinkers the best of both worlds, great taste at only 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. Miller Lite is the original light beer and this limited-edition can celebrates that innovation and helps inform consumers of the rich history behind our beer.”
In addition to becoming available to consumers in January, the Original Lite Can will appear in the upcoming Paramount Pictures’ release, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. The news team can be seen enjoying the Original Lite in the film, which will be released nationwide December 18.
The limited-edition Original Lite Can will be available nationwide January through March in 12-, 16- and 24-ounce sizes.

All well and good, but sheesh, why not just make a beer that people would want to drink, not one you have to market and advertise to death to create demand? Can people really be nostalgic for that can design? But that seems to be used a marketing tactic every few years, to change the package, the label or something along those lines. It’s indicative of a culture that’s long ago abandoned the importance of what’s inside the package and instead has been concentrating on the external. Sure, how the packaging looks is important, but it’s not more important than the beer, and for big beer companies it surely seems like marketing has trumped any other concerns for many, many years.

MILLER LITE ORIGINAL LITE CAN
Calling it a “Pilsner beer,” of course, strains the notion of what a pilsner is.

The David Vs. Goliath Prohibitionist Myth

December 11, 2013 By Jay Brooks

This one always bugs me. Many prohibitionist groups invoke the Bible story of David and Goliath to suggest that they represent the little man against the giant, faceless, impersonal alcohol companies. Alcohol Justice earlier today tweeted this gem begging for donations to “Help Alcohol Justice stand-up to Big Alcohol’s harmful practices.” Along with the tweet was this image:

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Beyond the obnoxious religious posturing, as if alcohol companies or people who drink it are irreligious, or that those who belong to either group are Philistines, the unequal position is untrue. The reality is that most of the prohibitionist groups currently operating are very well-funded. The mother of them all, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation “spent over a quarter of a billion (that’s billion, not million) dollars ($265,000,000.00) in just four years alone further developing and funding a nation-wide network of anti-alcohol organizations, centers, activist leaders, and opinion writers to promote its long-term goal.”

Similarly, MADD’s Focus is squarely on money and fund-raising. Here’s what Alcohol Facts has to say about MADD:

Non-profit organizations typically permit their chapters to keep most of the money they raise. For example, Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID) chapters get to keep 90% of all funds they raise. But MADD claims ownership of every penny raised by all its many chapters. Thus, after raising $129,000 locally and turning it all over as MADD demands, the Las Vegas chapter received a check from the national office for $1.29 (one dollar and twenty nine cents) as its share. MADD’s “focus is on greed,” said the chapter President, who reported “I’ve never seen such bloodsuckers!”
All items in some issues of Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s MADD E-Newsletter are devoted entirely to MADD’s primary mission of fund-raising. There are no pleas for sober driving, no calls for more sobriety checkpoints, no news reports, no petitions for legislation to reduce impaired driving and improve traffic safety — just fund-raising appeals. Most issues of the MADD E-Newsletter usually have at least one or two items not devoted to soliciting money.
MADD’s national web site lists all local chapters. Each listing is followed by a plea to “Donate Locally.” This is clearly deceptive because it implies that funds given to local chapters will be handled differently than funds given to the national office. In reality, all funds, wherever donated, must go directly and completely to the national office for use as it sees fit.

They go on:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is always hungry for more money. Although the organization’s financial investments exceed 25 million dollars, it has paid telemarketers huge fees to raise tens of millions of dollars per year from hard-working Americans. MADD has spent almost two out of every three dollars raised on fund-raising, forcing the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) to downgrade its evaluation of the organization to a “D.” MADD has spent twice as much on fundraising as the AIP finds acceptable. It would appear that raising money has become an end in itself at the MADD bureaucracy, with numerous employees, high salaries, expensive fringe benefits, and huge retirement funds.

In addition, the New Prohibition adds:

MADD operates more like a big business than a charity, with the majority of its funding going toward salaries and fringe benefits instead of public safety programs.
MADD’s 2007-2008 operating budget was over $45 million.

Alcohol Justice, who tweeted the David and Goliath reference, is funded by the Buck Trust. According to the New Prohibition, “the Leonard and Beryl Buck Foundation (Buck Trust) was created in 1975 after Beryl Buck left $9.1 million to Marin County, California with the provision that it be used to serve the needs of the County residents.” Alcohol Justice claims they receive just 3% of the Buck Trust’s funding, although despite the Trust’s provision that it be used locally, AJ’s reach and focus is well beyond Marin County’s borders.

According to AJ’s own publicly available financials, in 2012 they were worth a little over $1.6 million and had assets of almost $1.6 million at the end of the year. Of their annual budget, by far the largest chunk was spent on salaries, which were in excess of $600,000 and they spent over $800,000 in total compensation.

The point is, the prohibitionists are spending a lot of money, but is big alcohol spending that much more, such that they’re Goliath to the prohibitionist’s self-proclaimed David?

A Huffington Post report from 2010, entitled Food & Alcohol Industries’ Lobbying Dollars totals industry spending and, removing the food portions, alcohol spends about $4.2 million. A tidy sum to be sure, but it’s obviously dwarfed by just the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s $66.5 million per year over the past four years (totaling $265 million). According to Open Secrets, the alcohol industry isn’t even among the Top 20 since 1998. For 2013, Open Secrets reckons that the alcohol industry has spent $15.7 million, or only about 23.6% of what the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation alone spends. Add in what all the rest are spending, and the percentage goes down even more.

What’s obvious is that this David vs. Goliath propaganda is just that: propaganda. It’s a myth that the prohibitionists are tiny grassroots groups fighting against the giant alcohol Goliaths. It may be useful in raising money — clearly prohibitionist group’s most important concern — but it’s just not true. Please, put down the slingshot.

What’s In A Pipe?

December 8, 2013 By Jay Brooks

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Here’s a curious artifact from the 1842 Temperance Almanac, and a great example of why the prohibitionists were as nutty then was they are today. They saw, and see, evil and vice everywhere, with any single one not unto itself, but instead having to lead to more ruin and debauchery. While today we know that smoking isn’t the best choice you can make, in the mid-1800s it was considered a fairly benign pursuit, and in fact remained so well into my lifetime. I recall staying up with my psychotic stepfather, a chain-smoker, to watch the last television commercial air before midnight on New Year’s Day when they became forbidden on January 2, 1971. I’ve never been a cigarette smoker, though I used to enjoy the occasional cigar from time to time. The one thing I dislike more than smoking is obnoxious non-smokers, especially ex-smokers. But even the most ardent anti-tobacco advocate would have to admit that puffing on a pipe will not with absolute certainty lead to drinking alcohol. There’s no causation. That some people do both is, at best, a coincidence brought upon by the obvious fact that many people smoke (especially in 1842) and many people drink. But there are surely enough examples in everyone’s own experience to render such a blanket statement untenable. But for prohibitionists, it gets even weirder.
whats-in-a-pipe
So, as Sigmund Freud would later say, “sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.” Just don’t expect a prohibitionist to believe it. Instead, if you smoke a pipe, you won’t be able to help yourself, it will cause you to drink and get drunk. According to 1842 prohibitionist logic, “smoking induces intoxication” — meaning it will actually “bring about, produce, or cause” you to drink. But that’s not where it ends, get drunk and that in turn “induces bile,” which is “a bitter, alkaline, yellow or greenish liquid, secreted by the liver, that aids in absorption and digestion, especially of fats.” That, in turn, “induces jaundice” — “yellow discoloration of the skin, whites of the eyes, etc., due to an increase of bile pigments in the blood, often symptomatic of certain diseases, as hepatitis” followed inevitably and inexplicably by “dropsy,” which is “an infectious disease of fishes, characterized by a swollen, spongelike body and protruding scales, caused by a variety of the bacterium Pseudomonas punctata.” Yeah, that seems likely. But wait, it gets even worse. That fish disease you can’t help but contract “terminates in death.” So definitely enjoy that tobacco. Or as they conclude. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” I’m willing to bet you can find modern prohibitionists who still believe it’s true, or that at least once you take a drink your life is over and can only fall into abject ruin.

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