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

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monster-beer
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 and must be stopped. Because underage kids like things that are sweet and colorful, therefore it’s “shameless youth exploitation.” Send us your money today.

But their basic premise, that alcohol companies are “targeting” underage kids, is as absurd as it is insulting. No alcohol company wants to break the law, it’s simply not good for business. They make the beer. They advertise the beer. Someone else, in the majority of cases, sells the beer to the consumer. As long as manufacturers are not responsible for selling their wares, they can’t really be held accountable for who manages to get a hold of them. Is it a problem? In some instances … maybe, but making your product attractive or using color is not a crime.

The fact is, the drinks that have the Marin Institute up in arms probably do appeal more to younger people, young “adults” from 21-29, ballpark. But they’re allowed to drink them. The fact that someone who’s 20 also finds an ad for one of them attractive and likes bright colors, and maybe even wants to break the law and drink one, does not mean that the alcohol company intended that to happen. It’s a by-product of human nature. People want what they can’t have, kids especially so. I have to wonder how these people who incessantly complain managed to reach adulthood with such blatant ignorance of how it felt to be a kid? Did they simply forget their own childhood, or did they have it surgically removed? How did people who claim to be so committed to protecting children lose the ability to empathize with them and understand what it means to be a teenager? Isn’t a good parent considered one who can connect with their kids and relate to what they’re going through, the pressures and challenges? Yet these anti-alcohol arguments seem blissfully ignorant of how teenagers are struggling with becoming adults and are constantly trying adult behaviors that in many cases they’re not ready for yet. That’s one of the defining features of being a teenager, yet somehow it’s always the alcohol company’s fault. Instead of all this brouhaha, wouldn’t it just be easier to talk to your kids, instead of wasting all your energy creating a bogey monster?

R-rated movies advertise on TV, billboards, buses, etc. Kids see hundreds of movie ads a year for movies they aren’t allowed to go to a theater and watch. Are the film companies “targeting” kids just because some youth might like an ad for one of the movies, too? I don’t want my kids drinking soda pop, which I consider very unhealthy for them, but I’m not about to picket for the removal of soft drink ads from places where my kids might see them. I just talk to my kids, tell them why I don’t like soda and why I think they shouldn’t drink it.

Marin Institute top gun Bruce Lee Livingston’s only support in the two e-mail and Twitter missives he’s sent out over the last two days is this. “My preteen kids even know these brands.” Well, how scientific. My preteens, ages 9 and 6, have no idea about any of those brands. I asked each of them if they’d ever heard the names of the brands, listed them one by one. They’ve never heard of any of them. Not one. They had no idea what I was talking about, and I’m in the beer business. They see beer in the house constantly. To them it’s no big deal. They know it’s not for them, just Daddy’s work. Are my kids special? Well, of course I like to think so, but no; they’re just average kids. I’ve taken no extraordinary steps to shield them from the world. And yet for them the “danger” of these drinks is what I think it must be for most kids … a tempest in a teapot.

And that, I think, is the insulting part. I’m a father. Many brewers I know are parents. So are the distributors, the salespeople, the marketers, the retailers, the check-out clerks at the grocery store. We’re all parents, too. We love our kids no less than than anti-alcohol fanatics. Yet I feel like I should start growing horns any minute the way they paint the alcohol industry. They make it sound like we hate kids, just want to get them drunk so we can make a buck. It’s downright insulting. It pisses me off but good.

In the end, it’s just another way to scare people into donating money. Fear is a great motivator. Facts just get in the way. Here’s one of the tweets from the Marin Institute, tweeted yesterday:

Did you know that your kids were being targeted by Big Alcohol this summer? Help us to stop them now! http://t.co/1Jt5mKI

The link, naturally, takes you not to any facts backing up that outrageous claim, but to a page where you can donate money to them. The donation page has the following headline. “You can protect our kids and communities from Big Alcohol’s harmful practices.” How, one has to wonder, they’re planning on battling this imagined scourge is never detailed, but that’s not important. What’s important is “your support and helping in the struggle to keep Big Alcohol responsible for our children’s health and safety.” When exactly alcohol companies became responsible for my kids’ “health and safety,” or why they should be, is yet another of life’s great mysteries. Better you should send money to the Marin Institute than bother taking responsibility for your kids and your own parenting.

The clear inference in their message is that alcohol companies don’t care about your kids. They only want your money. What I find deeply obnoxious, and not a little disingenuous, about that is that it is exactly what the Marin Institute’s summer scare campaign is all about: money. This campaign is exclusively about fleecing the faithful and lining their coffers. And what better way to raise money than to invoke that most dangerous of beasts, the bogeyman of beer! Be afraid, be very afraid.

monster-beer
Beware the Bogeyman of Beer! This summer he’s coming to get you, your kids … and your little dog, too.

The Politics Of Never Being Satisfied

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Marin-I
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 to high heaven would be at least be a little pleased that the beer company has bowed to their pressure. You would, however, be wrong. That’s because the fanatical nature of the politics they’re peddling can never, ever be satisfied until there is no more alcohol to be sold, despite their insistence that they’re not neo-prohibitionists. Nothing any alcohol company ever does will be viewed as anything but wrong, no matter how well-meaning. My favorite example is still when A-B canned water and sent it to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The Marin Institute even complained about that because Bud had the temerity to put their logo on the cans and send out a press release. Of course, they complained about that in their own press release, but when they do it it’s apparently for a higher purpose.

The subtitle of the Marin Institute’s article was “Color Us Unimpressed,” and that’s them in a nutshell, as far as I can see. Nothing that any alcohol company does will ever impress them, short of voluntarily giving up and shutting down their business. Apparently that’s what being a “watchdog” means. The way they operate, “watchdog” has come to mean complain about absolutely everything the companies you’re watching do, no matter what it might be. Personally, I can’t remember a kind word the Marin Institute, or any other similar group, has ever said about a company that makes an alcoholic beverage. You’d think a self-avowed “observer” would be able to separate the good from the bad, but when by definition anything an alcohol company does is bad then I guess there’s nothing left to praise.

So I don’t understand why we even bother trying to appease them. It never works. It never, ever will work. Can we please stop playing into their hands by trying to be reasonable when such a strategy can never work? The anti-alcohol groups represent a minority of the population. The majority is like you and me, and enjoys a drink now and again and manages to do so responsibly, in moderation and while maintaining a job and a place in society. There are people who can’t handle drinking, but let’s stop those extreme examples from being the only ones cited. Let’s start pushing more positive stories. There are children who get their hands on alcohol, but it’s no different than when we were all underage, and most of us didn’t turn out too badly as a result. Reasonable steps should be taken to keep kids away from anything that society deems unsuitable for them, but when we get fanatical about it — as is most definitely the case with alcohol — all we do is ruin society for everybody, the adults included. It’s madness.

The whole rationale for the fanatical dislike of high alcohol malt-based beverages is that they’re, as the Marin Institute puts it; “sweet, fruit-flavored kid-friendly swill.” Well so what? People under 21 are still not allowed to buy them. If they manage to do so, that’s an entirely different problem. The fact that young adults ages, say 21 to 29, also like and want to buy “sweet, fruit-flavored kid-friendly swill, in a single-serving container with bright colors and design” should make no difference whatsoever. If it were anything but alcohol, people would recognize how absurd this argument is. The idea that a company can’t make a product that appeals to people who wish to buy it under the theory that it also might appeal to people who aren’t allowed to buy it is utterly absurd.

Soda pop, candy and fast food, all of which are arguably just as bad for kids, market their wares in just such a fashion and few people think twice. Many schools even offer some or all of those foods and drinks at their school, some even accepting legal kick-backs just to keep those products available on school grounds. But that’s okay because it’s not alcohol.

The irony is, I don’t like Tilt, or Joose, or any of the other alcopops, but what I dislike even more is when anti-alcohol crusaders use them as an excuse to assault common sense and to foment fear about all of the dangers that such things set loose upon the world. It’s especially troubling when they use that old tried and true “it’s for the kids” canard. It’s just bullshit. More people need to say so. Today, it’s alcopops. Tomorrow it’s beer with caffeine. The next day it’s everything else they don’t like. And you can bet on one thing. They’ll never, ever be satisfied.

Tilt-Red-logo

Wisconsin Legislature Attacks Craft Brewers

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wisconsin
With craft beer being the only segment of the brewing industry showing strong growth, you’d think that state governments trying to fix our current economic woes would be doing everything they can to help one of the few bright spots in American business. But never underestimate the power of lobbying by interests with more money than the craft brewers, namely beer distributors and Milwaukee-based powerhouse Miller Brewing, operating in the U.S. as MillerCoors, but also part of the international conglomerate SABMiller. (And thanks to a number of people who sent me different links to this emerging story.)

Right now in Wisconsin, there’s a battle brewing and it looks like the state’s many craft brewers will be hit the hardest by a proposed new wholesale bill that was recently approved by the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee. The bill is backed and supported by the Wisconsin Beer Distributors Association, the Tavern League of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Grocers Association, the Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Stores Association, the Wisconsin Wine & Spirits Institute and MillerCoors. In other words, all the big players, with money, who do most of their business with the big, corporate beer companies.

They claim that the new bill is designed “to stop St. Louis-based Budweiser and Bud Light brewer Anheuser-Busch from buying wholesale distributors in Wisconsin.” And that might be understandable and even believable, except for one little detail. Not only was the Wisconsin Brewers Guild (which represents over 35 independent, small craft brewers) not consulted on the bill, several of the provisions of the bill actively harm the small brewers, and those same provisions have nothing whatsoever to do with Anheuser-Busch InBev in the least. Obviously, someone is lying.

Here’s how several local news outlets in Wisconsin are reporting on the story. First, here’s the Isthmus Daily Page:

Current state law severely restricts the options brewers have to distribute their beer. Only breweries that produce less than 50,000 barrels of beer per year are allowed to sell their beer directly to retailers. All others must contract with wholesalers for distribution.

Worried that perhaps microbrewers were operating in too free a market, legislative Republicans have proposed even more restrictions on the beer distribution business. The legislation that passed JFC gets rid of any exemptions that allow some microbreweries to distribute their own beer, as well as forbids breweries from selling beer on their own property, either as a bar or a retailer.

And what would Walker-era legislation be if it didn’t offer more power to state government? The legislation also takes the power of licensing of wholesalers away from municipalities and puts them under the control of the state Department of Revenue.

But what will most likely happen in reality is that small brewers will have a much harder time bringing their beer to market. Whether the bill actually targets small brewers, or it’s an unintended consequence, is unclear but I can’t help but think that legislators — elected officials, after all — have a duty to look out for all of their constituencies, and should understand how their actions effect everyone. I know that’s overly idealistic, but that’s how it’s supposed to work and I’ll always continue to hope for at least that much. The fact that the big players all had a say but the small brewers did not speaks volumes about how this is working in reality, and it’s a pretty ugly picture, if not of outright corruption, then at least of unseemly favoritism.

Here’s what Sprecher Brewing president Jeff Hamilton had to say about the bill, as quoted in The Milwaukee Business Journal:

“This is limiting our business model,” said Hamilton, who also serves as president of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild. “The current system is working just fine.”

MillerCoors and the state’s distributors “went out on their own” in promoting and developing the legislation, Hamilton said.

“We didn’t have a say and it is devastating to our business,” he said.

Hamilton believes the target of the legislation isn’t Anheuser-Busch but rather craft brewers that have been rapidly growing as major brewers have struggled.

“It’s hedging against future competition,” he said.

Consolidation among the state’s distributors has made it more challenging for smaller brewers to sell their products, given the number of brands distributors carry, Hamilton said. The legislation also would thwart plans by some craft brewers to start their own distributorship.

A spokesman for MillerCoors, Nehl Horton, even acknowledges it would limit craft brewers’ options, but insists that it wasn’t their intention. To which I can only say, so what? They had to have known how this would affect craft brewers, but MillerCoors obviously didn’t care. Why should they? But the fourteen Wisconsin legislators, they should have cared about how this would effect viable Wisconsin businesses.

Obnoxiously, Horton added that “the fundamental issue is whether small craft brewers want to be brewers or want to be brewers, wholesalers and retailers.” Given the way small brewers have been treated by distributors and retailers over the years, as they struggled against some pretty big, entrenched institutions to change how people thought about beer, that’s an awfully insulting thing to say. Craft brewers have had to find creative ways to gain access to market out of necessity, including doing their own selling and distributing, precisely because of all the roadblocks put in their way by distributors, retailers and big brewers, the very people who are trying once more to harm their business with this new legislation. So to hear MillerCoors suggest that small brewers should behave more like them, after making it impossible for them to do so for decades, is a pretty offensive thing to say.

And now even the bars and restaurants, many of whom undoubtedly serve craft beer, are also out to get the brewers, too, as the new bill also takes away their ability to sell their own beer, even on their own property. As the Daily Page notes:

But why forbid brewers from operating pubs and restaurants — at least one on their property? It seems a rather blatant attempt to appease the Tavern League, which supported the legislation, and hopes that brewpubs don’t threaten their businesses.

Again, Wisconsin legislators had to know what they were doing, but did it anyway. June 15th, the provisions of the new wholesaler bill comes up for a full vote. Hopefully, an action alert from Support Your Local Brewery will be forthcoming.

And finally, here’s a television report from Channel 9 WAOW, in central Wisconsin:

Beer Missing From MyPlate

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food-pyramid
Yesterday the USDA scrapped their old food pyramid in favor of a new nutritional chart. The new one is called MyPlate, and as you’d expect it’s shaped like a plate. It’s also a bit simpler than previous efforts, divided into just four groups: proteins, grains, fruit and vegetables. And just off the plate is a fifth food group: “dairy,” looking very much like a cup of milk.

MyPlate

But where’s the beer? I say that only half in jest, as I realize that culturally there’s simply no way that alcohol would ever show up on our food pyramid. That’s despite the fact that for adults (let’s remember the food pyramid is for everybody) who regularly drink in moderation the odds are that they’ll live longer than folks who abstain or drink to excess. Yes, that means moderate beer drinkers are healthier, so it doesn’t seem like it’s too much of a stretch to think it could, or should, be included. Unfortunately, most Americans just can’t bring themselves to admit the obvious, that beer might actually be good for us. That’s especially true in a climate where a majority of adults do in fact drink responsibly while a very vocal minority of anti-alcohol fanatics do everything they can to undermine and distort those very facts.

MyPlate-beer

Not surprisingly, there are other countries whose food pyramids do include alcohol. In the French pyramid, they recommend two glasses of wine for a woman, and three for a man, every day. The Greek pyramid also suggests “wine in moderation.” In fact, eighteen EU nations give at least some type of advice about alcohol in moderation. Likewise, the Latin American food pyramid also recommends “alcohol in moderation.”

And in fact, many food pyramids with names like the “new food pyramid,” the “healthy food pyramid,” and the “Harvard food pyramid” do include the moderate alcohol drinking as part of their recommendations for a healthy lifestyle. But as long as the neo-prohibitionists are the only ones shouting about their peculiar disdain for alcohol, and the alcohol industry continues to play exclusively defense, nothing about this debate is likely to change anytime soon. It’s enough to drive me to drink.

harvard-food-pyramid
The Harvard Food Pyramid

Hoppy St. Lupulin’s Day

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Today, two years ago, Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado released a new seasonal beer, an Extra Pale Ale they called “St. Lupulin.”

From the press release:

A mystical legend in the Odell brewhouse, St. Lupulin (loop-you-lin) was the archetypal hophead. He devoted endless summers to endless rows of hops, tending to the flowers and the beloved resin within — lupulin. Extraordinary oils in this yellow resin provide this dry-hopped extra pale ale with an undeniably pleasing floral aroma. “St. Lupulin is our way of honoring the hop plant,” said brewer Jake O’Mara. “The beer has incredible hop character, but it’s balanced and very drinkable.”

I mention all this because I absolutely love the label artwork they came up with and just the idea of having a St. Lupulin. He looks to me like the Johnny Appleseed of hops. So since June 1st is the release date, I’m declaring that June 1 also be the feast day for St. Lupulin, patron saint of American hops. No reason we can’t have yet another beer saint, even a fictional one. We should come with our own myth for him, a tall tale. Happy St. Lupulin’s Day everyone. Enjoy a hoppy beer to celebrate.

The Street Picks The “10 Best Craft Beer Vacation Destinations”

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travel
The Street is a financial media company that covers the business world. Apparently they noticed that craft beer is doing well and put together a list of the
10 Best Craft Beer Vacation Destinations. Here’s the list below, though it’s not clear to me if the destinations are in any particular order or not.

  1. Full Sail Brewery, Hood River, OR
  2. Stone World Bistro and Gardens, Escondido, CA
  3. Highland Brewery, Asheville, NC
  4. Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, NY
  5. D.G. Yuengling & Sons brewery, Pottsville, PA
  6. Portland, Maine
  7. Samuel Adams Brewery, Boston, MA
  8. Sierra Nevada Brewery, Chico, CA
  9. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton/Rehoboth Beach, DE
  10. Wisconsin

I love Yuengling, and it is a great tour, but it’s hard to lump America’s oldest brewery in with the more recent craft brewers. And the new owners of Anchor Brewery will be surprised to learn that they’re owned by North American Brewing, as incorrectly cited in the article.

Overall, it’s not a bad list. I’ve been to seven of the ten destinations and can attest to those, and I’ve heard great things about the other ones. But it seems weird that Colorado, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon are all noticeably absent. What places do you think are missing?

Americans Choose Bud As Favorite Beer In National Poll

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pulse-polls
According to a new poll taken on behalf of the Rasmussen Reports by Pulse Opinion Research, When Americans Drink Beer, They Go Domestic, or as the St. Louis Business Journal spun it, America’s Favorite Beer is Bud. (And thanks to James L. for sending me the story.)

I’m sure the poll is statistically accurate, they are professionals and this is their business, but it’s a little hard to swallow that a survey of 345 people can truthfully speak for 311 million Americans. But here’s what they claim to have learned from the answers to four questions gleaned from those 345 random adults, as reported in the St. Louis Business Journal.

Nearly seven in 10 American beer drinkers are choosing domestic beers over imported ones, while only 22 percent like imported beers more.

However, those people are more evenly divided when it comes to what kind of beer to drink: 49 percent prefer a light beer, while 46 percent prefer a regular one.

When given a choice, 25 percent said say they are most likely to drink Budweiser. Second choice is Miller (19 percent) and third place went to Sam Adams (7 percent). Coors, Heineken, Corona, Pabst and Guinness are next, in descending order, with each garnering between 3 percent and 6 percent. Another percent choose some other brand.

Miller is the top choice of 26 percent of male beer drinkers, while one-out-of-three women prefer a Bud.

Here’s how it shakes out.

  1. Budweiser (25%)
  2. Miller (19%)
  3. Samuel Adams (7%)
  4. Coors
  5. Heineken
  6. Corona
  7. Pabst
  8. Guinness
  9. Other (25%)

But most of the conclusions of this little polls seem odd, almost misleading, given the questions and the way in which they were asked. Here’s what people heard when Pulse phoned potential participants with this survey.

  1. Are you more likely to order a beer in a bar or restaurant or buy it to drink at home?
  2. Are you more likely to drink a domestic beer or an imported beer?
  3. Are you more likely to drink a light beer or a regular beer?
  4. Which brand of beer are you most likely to drink … Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Corona, Heineken, Pabst, Sam Adams or Guinness?

Question one seems fine (51% home; 38% in a bar or restaurant; I don’t know where the other 11% are doing their drinking, maybe both?), but it’s fairly straightforward.

For question two, the language used seems strange. Few people outside the industry use the term “domestic,” I would think, to describe American beer. But within it, it has a very specific meaning. It’s essentially beer made by one of the big brewers, as separate and distinct from craft beer. 69% said they prefer domestic, while 22% said imported, with another 9% holding a least a third choice. But what that really means, given the muddled definitions, is hard to tell.

Question three is simply personally obnoxious, because I utterly hate the very notion of low-calorie light beer. To me it’s an abomination, albeit a very popular one. So the fact that “49% choose a light beer, while 46% prefer a regular one,” is probably right but it’s just sad to me, not to mention a triumph of marketing.

But the last question is quite telling. By giving just eight choices in a multiple choices fashion, the survey leads the people being polled to pick one of the those beers, even if it’s not their favorite. Most people likely chose one from among the eight, as opposed to their favorite among the literally 10,000+ beers brewed or sold in America. That they didn’t even offer an “other” choice further makes this question somewhat misleading, and I can only imagine how a multiple choice question differs from a more open one. But what’s perhaps more interesting is that even trying to pigeonhole the answers to question four, 25% said they’d “choose some other brand.” So while the St. Louis newspaper spins this poll by claiming American’s “top choice is Budweiser” (and curiously omit the percentage number who chose “other”), an equal number prefer “not Budweiser,” that is some other beer not among the limited choices of the poll.

I realize that the macro brewers do continue to hold a commanding market share and in the poll does reflect that. For many years, the Top 5 selling beers in the U.S. have been the following.

  1. Bud Light
  2. Budweiser
  3. Miller Lite
  4. Coors Light
  5. Corona Extra

After that, it changes a little bit from year to year, but usually the bottom five include some combination of Heineken, Busch and Busch Light, Natural Light, Michelob Ultra Light and Miller High Life. Samuel Adams, Guinness and Yuengling usually fall somewhere in the 11-15 rankings. So the poll does reflect beer sales, which is what you’d expect. “Favorite” and “best-selling” are not exactly the same, but I’d argue that sales is how people vote for the favorites. In the real world, outside polls, people vote with their wallets.

So in a somewhat accurate poll that reflects current market share patterns, one in four respondents eschewed the eight choices given them (which wasn’t even an option) and chose a beer not on the list, which was equal to the top vote getter, Budweiser. It seems to me the headline should have been more along the lines of “Equal Number of Americans Prefer A Beer Other Than Bud As Pick Budweiser As Their Favorite.” Or even better, as suggested by James Wright, “35% of Americans prefer NOT Bud, NOT Miller and NOT Coors.” Alright, they’re both a little unwieldy, but to me that’s the biggest takeaway from this poll.

Graduation & Prom Drinking

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graduation
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 curious features about this time of the year about how we still try to scare our kids into staying sober for prom and graduation that bear scrutiny.

The first missive of Spring comes from Join Together, with the requisite scary headline School Nurse: It’s Not OK to Give Teens Alcohol for Prom and Graduation. Apparently, we’re more likely to listen up if it’s coming from the school nurse. And while I recognize that in many states it’s actually illegal to give your own underage kids alcohol, I’m pretty sure that these days it’s almost always illegal to give alcohol to kids who are not your own. But that’s all year round, and I have to believe that most adults who engage in purchasing or furnishing alcohol to their kids or their kids’ friends at this time of the year, do so with the full knowledge that what they’re doing is not acceptable in today’s social climate, not to mention its illegality.

But here’s the thing, the news report by the school nurse is based on another study, by an insurance company no less, and that headline is Study Shows 90 Percent of Teens Admit Stronger Likelihood of Drinking and Driving on Prom Night, Yet Less Than One-Third See Dangers. According to Liberty Mutual’s study, in “a national survey of more than 2,500 eleventh and twelfth graders, 90 percent of teens believe their counterparts are more likely to drink and drive on prom night and 79 percent believe the same is true for graduation night. Yet, that belief does not translate to concern, as only 29 percent and 25 percent of teens say that driving on prom night and graduation night, respectively, comes with a high degree of danger.” They claim that’s “new research,” as if we didn’t know teenagers believe themselves immortal and are likelier to take risks than the more mature segment of the population. It’s one of the features of being a teenager. But okay, it’s not bad advice to remind teens about the difference between perceived risks and reality, but it’s just so heavy-handed, so black and white. They’ve been using the same scare tactics since I was going to prom over thirty years ago. Here’s the latest version:

[T]here were 380 teen alcohol-related traffic deaths during prom and graduation season (April, May and June) in 2007, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports 1,009 total teen fatalities (alcohol and non-alcohol-related) in motor vehicle crashes during those same months in 2008.

Alarmingly, parents may be unwitting enablers of teen drinking and driving: more than one in three teens (36 percent) say their parents have allowed them to attend parties where it is known that alcohol will be served, and 14 percent say their parents have, in fact, hosted such teen gatherings.

But it just strikes me as the razor blade in the apple. Every Halloween, that story gets trotted out to scare kids into being responsible about accepting candy from strangers during the holiday that’s designed for just that. As a kid, I remember being nervous about that the first year, but after hearing it over and over again, and never once seeing any real proof of a razor in an apple, any meaningful fear tended to dissipate. I can’t be the only adult who remembers that as a child there was a great sense that adults were constantly lying to us about the dangers of the world, among many other things less threatening.

But let’s look at those scary statistics. According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2008, there were 21,469,780 prom-age teenagers in America. So that means 0.0017% died in “alcohol-related traffic” accidents and 0.0046% in “alcohol and non-alcohol-related” traffic accidents. Now as a parent, I agree that even one needless death is too many, and I’d be inconsolable if it happened to one of my children. But the point is that the danger is relatively low compared to other dangers every person in the world faces every day. That seems so obvious to me I’m not even going to go looking for those, because any rational person should recognize that.

Yet here we are again chastising parents for trying to do something about it that’s not just the knee jerk “just say no” total-abstinence policy that we’re so fond of here in the U.S. Our response is simply disproportionate to the true danger, and I can’t help but believe the reason is because it’s — gasp — alcohol and we’ve lost the ability to be rational about it.

The fact that according to the scary news reports, this is still claimed to be a huge problem nearly 30 years after MADD supposedly set everybody straight and awareness of the issue of drunk driving is at an all-time high, should convince anyone that there is nothing we can do to stop people, even underage kids, from drinking. Prohibition didn’t work. More awareness didn’t work. The “just say no” campaign didn’t work. Kids are still drinking now, as they did nearly 35 years ago when I graduated from high school.

Back in those dark ages, it was quite common for parents to be at high school parties where alcohol was being served, at least where I grew up in suburban Pennsylvania. And most of the other parents in the community were not only aware of it but supported it. I have to laugh when the modern reports refer to such situations as making the parents “unwitting enablers” when there was not one driving fatality from the dozens and dozens of such events I attended in my youth. Parents took keys, and wouldn’t let anyone drive home if they were unable to. It made things safer, despite this weird notion today that the opposite is true.

young-frankenstein-movie

I recall one of the several graduation parties I went to as an 18-year old, the parents had a few kegs and even entertainment for us. The girl’s father was a movie projectionist and had a movie theater set up in their basement, and he was showing Young Frankenstein, which was only a few years old at that time (and this was in the days before videotape). It was great fun. I walked home that evening, retrieving my car the next morning. No harm, no foul. No one at that party got into any trouble. Imagine that?

Just lucky? Maybe, but I don’t think so. It was most certainly a different time, but that doesn’t mean the parents in my youth didn’t care about their children every bit as much as today’s parents. It feels quite insulting to read today’s adults, who were raised no doubt by loving parents, imply otherwise. You read these press releases, studies and propaganda and start to get the impression that any parent who gives their kid a drink is a monster. These same reports seem to see parents giving alcohol to kids in only one way, as completely irresponsible. But as with the other recent study I wrote about last week, there’s no suggestion that education could be part of it, or that parents might be better judges of how to raise their own children. Or that a party with alcohol that’s supervised could be preferable to kids drinking completely unsupervised, underground. Yet how could it not?

Yes, there’s no doubt our job as parents involves keeping our children safe, during prom season, graduation and every other time of the year, throughout their entire lives, really. But when it comes to alcohol, I’m quite tired of how the anti-alcohol abstinence policy seeps its way into every nook and cranny, particularly when it’s so ineffective. It doesn’t work on college campuses, where all it does is drive underage drinking underground, where it’s unsupervised and as a result far more dangerous. There’s no reason to believe it works any better at the high school level, either. High school kids often struggle with where they fit in society. They’re not really children anymore, yet they’re not quite adults, either. They often want to become adults faster than their parents and society will allow. It’s only natural. They see adults celebrate all manner of occasions — holidays, births, deaths, birthdays, achievements, good news, etc. — with alcohol. For them, the prom and graduation are reasons to celebrate. They want to be adults, they want to act like adults. So they want a drink, too. But many, if not most, are not ready to handle the personal responsibility that comes with drinking alcohol. In part, that’s because no one has taught them anything about how to accomplish that, and in fact even teaching them about alcohol is forbidden in many places and jurisdictions.

So when we instead keep creating policies that keep that status quo, in fact make it harder for parents to be in a position to supervise or educate their own kids about alcohol, I can’t help but wonder what’s really going on. It has to be more about control or ideology or something, because it’s not what’s best for the kids, despite being framed that way. It’s that old “it’s for the kids” canard that’s become so popular in anti-alcohol propaganda. But this goes even a bit further, as it tells parents not only to talk to their kids, not buy them alcohol and don’t let them drive after drinking — all good advice — but also that they shouldn’t do what they feel is best if it deviates from the party line (or perhaps “no party line”). It presumes all adult supervision is bad, and then tries to back up that claim with nonsense. It creates a black and white ideological world where only abstinence is approved. But it doesn’t matter how many more flawed studies or well-meaning advice from school nurses is doled out, “just say no” just doesn’t work. Could we please stop pretending it does, ignoring other approaches that might have a better chance at being effective? Why don’t we try “just say know” for a change. After all, school is supposed to be about learning, about preparing kids to become independent adults, productive members of society. Why not let that include a little alcohol education, too. That might go a long way toward keeping our youth safe on prom night and graduation, too.

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

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scientist-mad
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 these headlines accurately convey what the study actually found? Unsurprisingly, no. Not even close. Naturally, most news organizations don’t really care about the news or how accurately they portray it. Many of the reporters do, I should hasten to add, but the companies themselves and people that run them, not so much. It’s one of those open secrets that they’re businesses and what they care about is revenue. Advertising. Making money. They cynically refer to the empty spots in their papers where there is no advertising as “news holes.” That’s not necessarily a criticism. They do, I realize, have to make a profit. But it’s important to remember that they understand that fear, danger and making people uneasy sells far more papers than telling us everything’s hunky dory. “If it bleeds, it leads” is another well-known news axiom. Headlines are designed to pull in readers, to make them want to read the article. As a result, the more salacious or fearful the headline is, the more likely we’ll be persuaded to read the paper (and see all that glorious advertising that surrounds it).

The people who are against alcohol and have their own agenda to advance — those pesky neo-prohibitionists — also know how the world works and create studies that can be used to advance their cause. Lying with statistics is perhaps one of the oldest forms of propaganda. It’s certainly one of the most effective, because people tend to believe “studies” created in academia. They get them published in so-called scientific or academic journals, which while they have the imprimatur of accuracy, are often not as accurate as they first appear to be. Firstly, there’s just the law of large numbers, with an estimated 50 million such papers having been published since anybody started tracking these things, around 1665. Then how many are truly accurate or are based on legitimate premises or science? A 2009 Scottish study (and yes, I see the irony in relying on a study to discuss the inaccuracy of studies) entitled How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data revealed that a weighted average of nearly 2% “of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results,” and “up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices.” Worse still, when surveying their colleagues’ practices, scientists believed 14.2% of them falsified papers, “and up to 72% [engaged in] other questionable research practices.” At just one university, “81% were ‘willing to select, omit or fabricate data to win a grant or publish a paper.'” The point is that journal articles are hardly as sacrosanct as the media would have us believe. Common sense is still required. Asking about the agenda, where the money or support came from or how the study was conducted often reveals surprising results, yet the supposedly fair and balanced media more often takes them unquestioningly at face value, especially if they advance a particular agenda or can be used to scare people into reading an article.

In this case, the headlines state quite emphatically that if you drink along with your underage kids that more problems will ensue for your children. How did they arrive at that conclusion? According to the articles that conclusion was reached when “[r]esearchers looked at 1,945 adolescents in Washington state and Australia and compared two approaches to underage drinking: Zero-tolerance attitudes and ‘harm minimization.'” Join Together added that “[t]hey chose to include teens from both the U.S. and Australia because the two countries have different attitudes about teens and drinking.” And they further described the differences like this. “While the U.S. Surgeon General recently issued a call to action promoting a zero-tolerance position toward youth alcohol use, in Australia surveys indicate that 30 percent to 50 percent of teen drinkers get alcohol from their parents.”

So from that, the two articles conclude the following:

The study found that by ninth grade, 71 percent of Australian teens and 45 percent of U.S. teens used alcohol. More than a third (36 percent) of Australian students reported having experienced harmful consequences resulting from alcohol use, compared with 21 percent of U.S. teens.

“Providing opportunities for drinking in supervised contexts did not inhibit alcohol use or harmful use in either state,” the researchers wrote. They recommend that policies should not encourage parents to drink with their children and parents should not allow their children to drink under their supervision.

“Findings challenge the harm-minimization position that supervised alcohol use or early-age alcohol use will reduce the development of adolescent alcohol problems,” the researchers wrote.

But let’s look at the study itself, Influence of Family Factors and Supervised Alcohol Use on Adolescent Alcohol Use and Harms: Similarities Between Youth in Different Alcohol Policy Contexts. According to the Abstract, their objective was the following:

Harm-minimization policies suggest that alcohol use is a part of normal adolescent development and that parents should supervise their children’s use to encourage responsible drinking. Zero-tolerance policies suggest that all underage alcohol use should be discouraged. This article compared hypotheses derived from harm-minimization and zero-tolerance policies regarding the influence of family context and supervised drinking on adolescent alcohol use and related harms among adolescents in Washington State, USA, and Victoria, Australia, two states that have respectively adopted zero-tolerance and harm-minimization policies

And while I’ll agree that that sounds reasonable, comparing just two makes it an us vs. them scenario. And why Australia? The claim is that it’s because of the two policy differences, but there are, of course, other ones. For example, Australian youths become adults at 18 and that includes the ability to legally buy and consume alcohol, unlike here in the U.S., where we have essentially two levels of adulthood and our youth must wait until they’re 21 to legally imbibe. Then there’s the drinking culture. Here in the U.S., we’re ranked 13th in per capita alcohol consumption, drinking about 81.6 litres (21.5 gallons per year, or roughly 230 12 oz. bottles or 9.5 cases per year). Australia, by contrast, is ranked 5th and consumes 104.7 litres (27.6 gallons, or roughly 295 12 oz. bottles or 12.3 cases per year). By percentage, the difference is that Americans, on average, drink about three-quarters of what Australians do.

I can’t help but believe that choosing just two so disparate drinking cultures, with no control, essentially created a false dichotomy, an either or situation. It seems to me, a survey or multiple nations would be far more revealing.

The so-called “harmful consequences” were self-reported and included “loss of control (“not able to stop drinking once you had started”) and social conflict (“trouble at school the next day,” “arguments with your family,” and “become violent and get into a fight”). Other alcohol-related consequences were “got injured or had an accident,” “had sex with someone, which you later regretted,” “got so drunk you were sick or passed out,” and “were unable to remember the night before because you had been drinking (blackouts).” Just under 3% of the kids had their answers discounted because they were considered to be dishonest, which given the subject matter seems quite low, to me at least. But that aside, many of the behaviors listed, except of course the ones directly related to drinking (“loss of control” and “blackouts”) don’t require alcohol to be fairly common in adolescence. As a result, it seems to me that causality doesn’t necessarily have to be in the alcohol. Any of those experiences could have happened with or without alcohol. Young teenagers could even experience something similar to a “loss of control” without alcohol — I know my friends and I sometimes did at that age. Alcohol could cause such behaviors, or exacerbate them, but it seems to me it shouldn’t be a given that the two are conclusively linked to one another.

Predictably, the prevalence of alcohol use behavior in both states increased over time between seventh and ninth grades. Lifetime alcohol use by seventh grade among Victoria students was significantly higher than among Washington students (59% vs. 39%). By eighth grade, drinking in adult supervised settings was reported by two thirds of students in Victoria and 35% of Washington youth. By ninth grade, rates of alcohol use had increased to 71% in Victoria and 45% in Washington. More than a third of Victoria students (36%) also reported having experienced any harmful consequences resulting from their alcohol use, compared

What’s also not in the reports of the study is that the kids studied were 7th graders — 12 and 13-years olds — who were then followed over the subsequent three years. So another problem with that data is that an 8th grader in the U.S. is seven years from the minimum drinking age whereas an Australian is only three years from being allowed to legally drink. That, I think, would change any parents’ decision to educate their child about alcohol, and especially when and how they’d educate them regardless of the ages being the same. It would also go a long way in explaining the results.

Another issue I see is that the general terms “favorable parental attitudes toward alcohol use” and “adult-supervised alcohol use” is never really defined, suggesting it has only a general meaning that avoids any nuanced difference. For example, I think there’s a big difference between an alcoholic who lets their kids drink because they don’t care or don’t see any possible harm and a parent who carefully tries to educate their kids about responsible drinking. One might just allow drinking in the household without limit while the other’s goal would be to sample their kids and model behavior to show that moderation and enjoyment is the key. Those are two very different approaches that would both fall under the umbrella of “favorable parental attitudes toward alcohol use” and “adult-supervised alcohol use” as far as the study is concerned.

In the summary discussion, the researchers concluded that “although harm-minimization perspectives contend that youth drinking in adult-supervised settings is protective against future harmful use, we found that adult supervised drinking in both states resulted in higher levels of harmful alcohol use.” But even in their own discussion of the study’s limitations, they admit that the lack of specificity of which adult was doing the supervising and the problems inherent in adolescents self-reporting and further contend that “a more concrete
measure asking about parents or guardians overseeing youth alcohol use may have yielded different results.”

Though not mentioned specifically, they never even bring up or account for the nature and type of the adult supervision, and for me that’s the most important factor. Because it’s not just that adults should allow their children to drink in their presence. They should use such opportunities to educate and teach them about alcohol. Merely allowing such behavior I would contend, is reckless and even counter-productive and on that point, I agree with the premise of the study. But their methods do nothing to make that all-important distinction, which is the crux of the issue, at least to my way of thinking.

And while I do doubt the sincerity of the researchers and the study itself, the media and especially the anti-alcohol groups will use the study to their own ends and gloss over the study’s own admitted limitations. As the headlines make clear, they’re not interested in accurately portraying the study’s results. Few people will go to the trouble of actually reading it, and will take it at face value, never questioning the results. Especially egregious is lead researcher Barbara McMorris’ quote that “[k]ids need parents to be parents and not drinking buddies.” Did anyone suggest otherwise? Ever? No, but characterizing any adult supervised drinking as being a “drinking buddy” makes her intentions somewhat suspect. Because raising a child to be an independent and productive adult member of society is not merely saying no. We saw how well that worked when Nancy Reagen tried it in the 80s. Sometimes we have to show them the way, teach them the difference between good and bad in a way that’s not just black and white. Things are rarely all-good or all-bad, and alcohol is a prime example. Saying adults shouldn’t be allowed to educate their children about alcohol robs them of the ability of doing their job. And pushing a zero-tolerance policy with this faulty “study” does nothing to further the goal of parents’ raising responsible adults.

So when the study concludes that their “[f]indings challenge the harm-minimization position that supervised alcohol use or early-age alcohol use will reduce the development of adolescent alcohol problems” and in the final sentence they claim that the “[r]esults from the current study provide consistent support for parents adopting a ‘no-use’ standard if they want to reduce harmful alcohol use among their adolescents,” I have to question their motives. Because those statements are essentially false. That conclusion is sound only if you ignore the manner in which the parents supervise their children, and seems to assume there is no positive way to educate your children about alcohol under supervision. I, myself, wouldn’t want to start that process in the 7th grade, but by high school, I think every child should be taught about a great many things that our schools don’t tackle. And that leaves it to every parent to prepare their children for adulthood, including teaching them about the use of alcohol. Saying the only way to prepare them for becoming an adult is to make sure they never drink the stuff all but insures they’ll binge drink the first chance they get, whether as a freshman in college or whenever they’re unsupervised. There’s nothing like a taboo to create demand. And that strikes me as irresponsible. That strikes me as the science of manipulation.

mad_scientist