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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

No Beer At Royal Wedding?

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uk
Another royal wedding’s coming up this Friday. I care about it as much as the last one in 1981 — not one whit. In deference to my British colleagues and friends who cling to the notion that the royal family matters, I’ll spare you my usual diatribe. But it was announced recently that no beer will be served at the The Royal Wedding (with it’s own “official” website, how klassy) between Prince William and commoner — could there be a more insulting term to call someone to their face? — Kate Middleton.

That’s right, no beer at a British wedding. The reason, according to the Daily Mail, is that “while the younger royals enjoy a pint from time to time, neither Kate nor William is a big beer drinker so they decided to leave it off the menu.” Which is, of course, all well and good if you take the position that it’s their wedding, they can — and should — do as they like. Personally, I had my wedding reception in a brewery. And as British clergyman Sydney Smith quipped in 1934, “what two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?” So perhaps that makes more British than the man second in line to be king.

But, unlike my wedding or your wedding, this one hardly counts as a private affair, it’s a national event and should, I suspect, reflect the nation. At a time when British beer is suffering, pub closings are epidemic and neo-prohibitionists have their attack dogs out, you would think this might be a perfect time to celebrate the wedding with that most British of drinks, cask ale. But, no, apparently champagne is more to the liking of the royals, or at least the ones who planned the wedding. But here’s the part that should have every red-blooded Brit up in arms. This is the “official” reason given for the ban on beer at the wedding. “It is thought that guests knocking back pints of ale was considered rather unseemly for such a regal affair attended by royals and heads of state from around the world” or put even more bluntly by a Daily Mail source, “[l]et’s face it, it isn’t really an appropriate drink to be serving in the Queen’s presence at such an occasion.” Really, that’s the problem? That the Queen might object to the drink her people should be most proud of, that contributes greatly to her nation’s economy, and is enjoyed by the majority of her subjects being served at her grandson’s wedding? If the royal family was truly in touch with “their people,” I should think they’d come to a very different conclusion.

Their source added. “It was always their intention to give their guests a sophisticated experience and they have chosen the food and drink with this in mind.” And there the other shoe drops. Beer isn’t “sophisticated” enough for a royal wedding. Wow.

UPDATE: Pete Brown had a similar reaction to this news and wrote a post, Beer ‘Not Appropriate’ For Royal Wedding that made some similar points and then a great many more of them, all spot on. Though hilariously, you can see in the comments, there are many people who do think the royals are still above criticism and even that no one should use “bad” language when discussing them. Oh, dear, and we’re considered the provincial ones. Hilarious.

Luckily, Scotland’s BrewDog has just the thing for this sort of nonsense, a beer entitled Royal Virility Performance. With only 1,000 bottles to be released the day before the wedding, here’s how it’s described:

A limited-edition beer containing herbal viagra to mark the forthcoming royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th. Brewed using various well known aphrodisiacs, the limited edition artisanal beer will only be available to buy from the BrewDog.com website.

According to the specially commissioned label, the Royal Virility Performance contains herbal viagra, chocolate, Goat Weed and ‘a healthy dose of sarcasm’. The beer is a 7.5% ABV India Pale Ale and has been brewed at BrewDog’s brewery in Fraserburgh.

With this beer we want to take the wheels off the royal wedding bandwagon being jumped on by dozens of breweries; The Royal Virility Performance is the perfect antidote to all the hype. A beer should be brewed with a purpose, not just because some toffs are getting married, so we created something at our brewery that will undermine those special edition beers and other assorted seaside tat, whilst at the same time actually give the happy couple something extra on their big day.

BrewDog-royal-virility-btl

Boycott Under Way On Beer Stocked By Alabama A-B Distributors

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alabama
Free the Hops, the organization in Alabama that successfully won the fight over hard opposition to allow beer over 6% abv in the state, is calling for a boycott of both Anheuser-Busch products along with those beers distributed by A-B Houses in Alabama. The boycott is a result of A-B distributor lobbyists “blocking the Legislature’s passing [of] the Brewery Modernization Act,” which Free the Hops helped pass “in the Alabama Senate earlier this month.” The Birmingham News has a full account of the story in an article entitled Free the Hops calls for boycott of beers stocked by Anheuser-Busch distributors in Alabama. Free the Hops also has a boycott statement on their website along with a list of the distributors involved. Essentially the law would simply allow brewpubs to no longer be subject to antiquated laws, such as having to be located in “a historic building” or be located in “a county that had a brewery prior to 1918.” Ridiculous stuff. It would be hard to argue that the law as it stands makes any sense or is a fair under any definition. But apparently the A-B beer distributors in Alabama see it as competition that cannot be allowed, despite the fact that in most of the other 49 states, brewpubs and beer distributors happily co-exist with one another.

I was originally in favor of the boycott, as it seems like there isn’t much choice insofar as what the Bud houses are doing. But as several people have pointed out, it will also harm a great number of craft brewery’s business in the state as well. Free the Hops obviously recognizes that fact and their concern is buying craft beer from one of the A-B distributors is still “channeling profits to wholesalers.” So in a way, it’s a bit like chemotherapy. Honestly, I’m conflicted. As Lew Bryson said in an exchange we had on Facebook. “This is odd territory for most beer drinkers: asking them to boycott a DISTRIBUTOR rather than a brand is confusing enough, but asking them to boycott craft beers to help craft beer…? Not going to work. If I were in Alabama, I would directly encourage people not to support a boycott of any craft brands for this reason. This is not the way to do it.” So I think we all agree that boycotting the ABI products is the way to go, but as for the craft brands … that seems like a much trickier, thornier issue. I can see both sides of the argument, and am left unsatisfied by either one. In the end, I think it’s going to be up to everyone’s individual conscience on what to boycott.

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

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ofc-nat-stats
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 alcohol intake were said to be, was completely made up, quite literally “plucked out of the air.”

On Monday, the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) “admitted that it misrepresented the trends in alcohol consumption and has issued a sincere apology to the Portman Group, the drinks industry organisation that champions responsible drinking.”

According to Straight Statistics:

In a report about the productivity of the NHS published at the end of last month, the claim was made that the proportion of women drinking more than 14 units a week had increased by a fifth since 1998, leading to a greater demand for healthcare. As Straight Statistics reported here, there was no justification for such a claim.

A change in methodology for measuring alcohol consumption in 2006 creates a break in the time series. If not allowed for, this gives the impression that the number of women who exceed 14 units a week has indeed increased. Plenty of anti-drink campaigners are happy to spread this false message but it came as a shock when the ONS did so.

David Poley, chief executive of the Portman Group wrote to Stephen Penneck, Director General of the ONS, who has now replied admitting that Mr Poley’s concerns are “entirely justified”. He blames a “lapse in the quality assurance process by which we check carefully the accuracy and reliability of any information that is for publication … unfortunately in this rare instance a key issue went unnoticed.”

The article and press release have been amended. The article, accessible here, is now proceeded by a correction notice. The press release now reads: “The percentage of males and females consuming over the weekly recommended alcohol limits declined from 2006 to 2009.”

Mr Penneck’s response is prompt, straightforward, and makes no attempt to fudge the issue. If only it were equally easy to persuade the media to look more critically at its assumptions about drinking being out of control.

At least they admitted their error. I doubt the same would be true on this side of the pond, where statistical errors tend to live in perpetuity if they serve the anti-alcohol agenda. But the original stories that parroted the incorrect statistics that drinking for women has increased in The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Star are still out there and, as far as I know, have not been corrected. They can’t be, really, because the stories focused on the false problem at the heart of the mistake. And that’s the same here, too, as propaganda — even after it’s been disproved — is still used by numerous anti-alcohol groups. Repeat a lie often enough and … well, you know the rest.

Rare Beer Prices On eBay

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ebay
A GT Wharton posted an interesting survey that he conducted about the prices people will bay for rare beer on eBay. His article, entitled Market Behavior for Rare Beer: eBay Auction Prices in Review appeared today on Rate Beer’s Hop Press. It appears to be a quite thorough look at auction prices realized over a one-month period. His dataset included 887 auctions. The average price was $122 ($137 w/shipping included). $9.50 was the low price and $999 the highest.

The five most expensive auctions by 12oz volume were:

  1. Midnight Sun M: $544.77
  2. Cantillon Don Quijote: $312.40
  3. Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus 1992 Vintage: $284.00
  4. Russian River Depuration: $265.07
  5. Flossmoor Station Wooden Hell: $260.12

And here, for example, is a chart showing “Average Value of Three Floyds Dark Lord by Vintage.”
Wharton-Ebay1

Interesting stuff. He doesn’t go into the moral dilemma of selling beer on eBay and the fact that most brewers decry the practice, but from a merely numbers perspective it’s worth a read.

When Science Becomes Propaganda: The Caffeine & Alcohol Conundrum

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science
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 Trendy Cocktails and was conducted at the Universities of Northern Kentucky and the Maryland School of Public Health. Here’s how the press release for the study explains it:

  • A new laboratory study compares the effects of alcohol alone versus alcohol mixed with an energy drink on a cognitive task, as well as participants’ reports of feelings of intoxication.
  • Results show that energy drinks can enhance the feeling of stimulation that occurs when drinking alcohol.
  • However, energy drinks did not alter the level of behavioral impairment when drinking alcohol, particularly for impaired impulse control.
  • The combination of impaired impulse control and enhanced stimulation may make energy drinks combined with alcohol riskier than alcohol alone.

Energy drinks mixed with alcohol, such as Red Bull™ and vodka, have become trendy. While this consumption has been implicated in risky drinking practices and associated accidents and injuries, there is little laboratory research on how the effects of this combination differ from those of drinking alcohol alone. A recent laboratory study, comparing measures of intoxication due to alcohol alone versus alcohol/energy drink, has found that the combination of the energy drink enhanced feelings of stimulation in participants. However, the energy drink did not change the level of impairment for impulsive behavior. These findings suggest that energy drinks combined with alcohol may increase the risks associated with drinking.

But take a closer look at what that says. The caffeine stimulates. Well, duh. That’s what caffeine does. Did anybody doubt that? Then the study goes on to say that “energy drinks did not alter the level of behavioral impairment when drinking alcohol,” meaning it didn’t make people more drunk. Then they conclude combining caffeine and alcohol “may increase the risks associated with drinking [my emphasis].”

Here’s how they conducted it:

Marczinski [lead author] and her colleagues randomly assigned 56 college student participants (28 men, 28 women), between the ages of 21 and 33, to one of four groups that received four different doses: 0.65 g/kg alcohol, 3.57 ml/kg energy drink, energy drink/alcohol, or a placebo beverage. The participants’ behavior was measured on a task that measures how quickly one can execute and suppress actions following the dose. Participants also rated how they felt, including feelings of stimulation, sedation, impairment, and levels of intoxication.

“We found that an energy drink alters the reaction to alcohol that a drinker experiences when compared to a drinker that consumed alcohol alone,” said Marczinski. “A consumer of alcohol, with or without the energy drink, acts impulsively compared to when they had not consumed alcohol. However, the consumer of the alcohol/energy drink felt more stimulated compared to an alcohol-alone consumer. Therefore, consumption of an energy drink combined with alcohol sets up a risky scenario for the drinker due to this enhanced feeling of stimulation and high impulsivity levels.”

“To reiterate,” said Arria, “the investigators found that the presence of an energy drink did not change the level of impairment associated with alcohol consumption.” It did, however, change the perception of impairment.

“The findings from this study provide concrete laboratory evidence that the mixture of energy drinks with alcohol is riskier than alcohol alone,” said Marczinski. “College students need to be aware of the risks of these beverages. Moreover, clinicians who are working with risky drinkers will need to try and steer their clients away from these beverages.”

But that’s hardly “concrete” as she characterizes it. In fact, it’s the very opposite of concrete. It didn’t change impairment, just how people felt about it, how they perceived it. From that “insight” they concluded that since being stimulated “sets up a risky scenario for the drinker” that therefore the risk is greater. And they recommend that people should “be aware of the risks.” So far, so good. But if you didn’t realize drinking coffee after alcohol would stimulate you, perhaps you shouldn’t be in college after all. Maybe it’s time to lower your sights if that obvious bit of wisdom eluded you. I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

When Marczinski states that “[y]oung people are now drinking alcohol in different ways than they have in the past” I have to wonder what her evidence is for that nonsense. People have been mixing caffeine and alcohol for as long as the two have been around, I’d wager. This is one of those generational things, where the older one always believes the younger generation is worse than they were. The only difference between when I was a kid and now, at least regarding caffeine and alcohol, is that you don’t have to go to the trouble of mixing it yourself.

And I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m not a fan of alcopops or alcoholic drinks with caffeine added (that is not naturally occurring like many coffee stouts, for example). But for me, that’s not the issue. The issue is society going out of its mind over a perceived problem for which there is only anecdotal evidence that there even is a problem. And this study seems like more of the same. I don’t like these drinks, don’t drink them myself, but I don’t think they should be banned just because some people don’t like them. There are obviously adults who bought them, and want to continue buying them, and they shouldn’t be removed from shelves just so that kids can’t buy them. Kids are already prohibited from buying them. If kids can still get them, that’s an entirely different problem. Kids can’t own guns either, but I don’t see any movement to ban all guns so that we can keep them out of the hands of children. That’s just not how a society should function. We shouldn’t make the world safe for our children by only allowing kid friendly products to be in it.

In the end, this “study” is hardly the hard evidence that the caffeine and alcohol conundrum has now been solved and they’ve found the data to close the book on this scourge. Even its authors know as much, as they use qualifying words all over the place. Their hesitation is right there in the title of the press release, which is “Drinking energy beverages mixed with alcohol may be riskier than drinking alcohol alone.” [my emphasis.] Up front, it tells you this is not as conclusive as you might otherwise think because they admit that a greater risk is simply possible. Beyond using an almost laughable 56 test subjects, the study simply jumps to anecdotal conclusions that are not supported by what passes for hard data. There really isn’t any hard data beyond people’s feelings after having consumed alcohol and then alcohol with caffeine and the authors then concluding those feelings might turn into actions that were riskier.

But even as honestly as the study states that their “findings suggest that energy drinks combined with alcohol may increase the risks associated with drinking,” naturally that’s not how it’s being reported. Every headline has essentially removed the qualifying “might” and made it sound far scarier and more conclusive than it really is. Here’s just a few examples.

Combining Energy Drinks with Alcohol More Dangerous Than Drinking Alcohol Alone at Partnership for a Drug Free America and as linked to a Join Together e-mail blast. And that report begins by stating that “A new study finds that consuming a caffeine-infused energy drink combined with alcohol is more dangerous than drinking alcohol alone.” But that’s not what the study concluded at all.

Likewise, HealthDay’s headline was Alcohol-Energy Drink Combo Riskier Than Booze Alone, Study Says, MedPage states Alcohol and Energy Drinks, a Risky Combination and News Feed Researcher claims Study: Alcohol, Energy Drinks Are Risky Combo. But again, those headlines are misleading. That’s not what the “study” claims. The “study” never even mentions drunk driving, but sure enough some of the news reports do. All the “study” says is that drinking alcohol and caffeine might make you feel more stimulated which might possibly lead you to act more impulsively, which might make you engage in riskier behaviors. Maybe. Maybe we can agree that’s not exactly science, but propaganda.

The Brain and Alcohol Research Project

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trinity-college
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 to perform worse in class than normally would have been expected, but only in the first year of college. After that, drinking to excess produces no discernible difference in academic performance.

So the obvious takeaway from that is that during a student’s first year away from home and away from parental rule, young adults tend to go a little wild that first year but then settle down into academic life for the remaining three years of their four-year college experience. They may not stop drinking, but they figure out how to hit the books, too. It seems rather predictable when you think about, especially when there’s virtually no alcohol education prior to college and in some states even parents are forbidden from educating their own children about drinking.

But it also seems to fly in the face of the neo-prohibitionist hue and cry about underage drinking being as bad for student performance as believed. And undoubtedly the worst of it is because it’s underground as a result of the minimum age being 21 instead of a more reasonable 18.

Also known as BARCS (for Brain and Alcohol Research with College Students), the project is “a large-scale longitudinal study that includes more than 2,000 college students from diverse backgrounds, set out to definitively address previously unanswered questions such as: Can heavy drinking in college affect brain structure and grades? If so, is it related to the overall amount of alcohol consumed or more to consumption patterns, such as binging and blackouts? Why is it that many students drink heavily in college but only a minority goes on to have alcohol problems after college? Are all adolescents affected equally by alcohol in terms of possible effects on brain and risk for later alcohol abuse? Is there a way to identify the people who will be longer-term problem drinkers?”

Unfortunately, I believe they begin with a failed premise. The study defines binge drinking “as a pattern of drinking that raises a person’s blood alcohol content to 0.08 percent or above.” That means drinking enough to be considered drunk at the lowest BAC allowed in most jurisdictions is the same as binge drinking. It’s amazing how what it means to binge drink keeps getting lower and lower, presumably in an effort to make the perceived problem seem increasingly worse. But this greater incidence of binge drinking is due entirely to continually redefining its meaning. Equating binge drinking with merely being drunk (under the legal definition) removes any distinction between the two and renders it meaningless.

Your Brain On Beer

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brain-2
A new study conducted at the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin appears to indicate that alcohol actually helps your memory, at least at the synapse level; that “alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better.” The new study, published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, is a mouthful, entitled Previous Ethanol Experience Enhances Synaptic Plasticity of NMDA Receptors in the Ventral Tegmental Area. And the Abstract isn’t much clearer:

Alcohol addiction (alcoholism) is one of the most prevalent substance abuse disorders worldwide. Addiction is thought to arise, in part, from a maladaptive learning process in which enduring memories of drug experiences are formed. However, alcohol (ethanol) generally interferes with synaptic plasticity mechanisms in the CNS and thus impairs various types of learning and memory. Therefore, it is unclear how powerful memories associated with alcohol experience are formed during the development of alcoholism. Here, using brain slice electrophysiology in mice, we show that repeated in vivo ethanol exposure (2 g/kg, i.p., three times daily for 7 d) causes increased susceptibility to the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) of NMDA receptor (NMDAR)-mediated transmission in mesolimbic dopamine neurons, a form of synaptic plasticity that may drive the learning of stimuli associated with rewards, including drugs of abuse. Enhancement of NMDAR plasticity results from an increase in the potency of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) in producing facilitation of action potential-evoked Ca2+ signals, which is critical for LTP induction. This increase in IP3 effect, which lasts for a week but not a month after ethanol withdrawal, occurs through a protein kinase A (PKA)-dependent mechanism. Corticotropin-releasing factor, a stress-related neuropeptide implicated in alcoholism and other addictions, further amplifies the PKA-mediated increase in IP3 effect in ethanol-treated mice. Finally, we found that ethanol-treated mice display enhanced place conditioning induced by the psychostimulant cocaine. These data suggest that repeated ethanol experience may promote the formation of drug-associated memories by enhancing synaptic plasticity of NMDARs in dopamine neurons.

Professor Hitoshi Morikawa, who wrote the paper, is slightly less jargon-laden and impenetrable on the University’s website, where he more generally lays out the goals of his research:

This lab specifically focuses on the dopaminergic neurons in the ventral midbrain. They are activated by the perception and expectation of rewards. Therefore, the dopaminergic projections from the midbrain to the limbic structures constitute an endogenous reward circuit. Behaviors that lead to the enhancement of dopamine release in this brain reward circuit tend to be repeated (reinforced). Addictive drugs induce stronger stimulation of dopaminergic transmission than almost any natural reinforcers (food, sex, etc). Thus, drugs are repeatedly used (abused) in vulnerable individuals, which will lead to plastic changes in the reward circuit.

The amount and temporal profile of dopamine release is controlled by the firing pattern of dopamine neurons, which is determined by the interaction of their intrinsic membrane properties and the afferent inputs they receive from other neurons. Accordingly, we make detailed analyses of the influence of addictive drugs on membrane ionic conductances and neurotransmitter inputs of dopamine neurons, and investigate the resulting alteration in the firing pattern. We use brain slices because they retain intact synaptic connections that are necessary for these studies. Brain slices are obtained from drug-naïve animals and animals that are chronically treated with drugs to elucidate the plastic changes induced by repeated exposure to drugs in vivo. Technically, we perform patch clamp electrophysiological recordings combined with confocal fluorescent imaging of intracellular ions. These methods will allow us to delineate the cellular events that determine the excitability of neurons with a preciseness that could not be attained by other conventional techniques. Therefore, this lab offers an ideal system to link the behavior of certain types of central neurons to that of a whole organism.

But a science news website, Physog.com has the most understandable account of the study, and what it means.

Essentially, and somewhat confusingly, the study shows that while common view that too much alcohol can be bad for memory retention and learning, that how your brain reacts to it is more complicated than that.

“Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we’re talking about conscious memory,” says Morikawa, whose results were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. “Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague’s name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning. But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or ‘conditionability,’ at that level.”

So while short terms losses may occur, long term gains in subconscious memory may also be taking place. “Morikawa’s study found that repeated ethanol exposure enhances synaptic plasticity in a key area in the brain, [and] is further evidence toward an emerging consensus in the neuroscience community that drug and alcohol addiction is fundamentally a learning and memory disorder.”

When we drink alcohol (or shoot up heroin, or snort cocaine, or take methamphetamines), our subconscious is learning to consume more. But it doesn’t stop there. We become more receptive to forming subsconscious memories and habits with respect to food, music, even people and social situations.

In an important sense, says Morikawa, alcoholics aren’t addicted to the experience of pleasure or relief they get from drinking alcohol. They’re addicted to the constellation of environmental, behavioral and physiological cues that are reinforced when alcohol triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.

“People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure transmitter, but more accurately it’s a learning transmitter,” says Morikawa. “It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released.”

Alcohol, in this model, is the enabler. It hijacks the dopaminergic system, and it tells our brain that what we’re doing at that moment is rewarding (and thus worth repeating).

Among the things we learn is that drinking alcohol is rewarding. We also learn that going to the bar, chatting with friends, eating certain foods and listening to certain kinds of music are rewarding. The more often we do these things while drinking, and the more dopamine that gets released, the more “potentiated” the various synapses become and the more we crave the set of experiences and associations that orbit around the alcohol use.

Between that, and new research from the University of Michigan that may have identified a gene — the GABRA2 — that increases the risk of alcoholism in certain individuals, it seems clear that there are environmental and genetic factors that make some people more susceptible to becoming unable to drink responsibly, along with the obvious psychological factors, too. But what that also suggests is that alcoholism is more like a food allergy insofar as it does not effect everyone in the same way, and in fact the vast majority of people who do consume alcohol are able to do so responsibly and in moderation, which also allows them to take advantage of the many health benefits of drinking in moderation. Contrary to neo-prohibitionist propaganda, not everyone becomes an alcoholic with the first sip they take. Most, in fact, not only don’t, but never do, yet the anti-alcohol contingency tends to treat alcohol as a toxic substance that is dangerous to everyone equally or that everyone has the potential to become an alcoholic. I just don’t think that’s true. And the science seems to bearing that out. And because of all the beer I’ve consumed, I can remember all that, too. Thank you, beer.

Old Enough To Fight, Old Enough For Beer

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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 drinking age statute mandates that in order to receive federal highway money, a state has to keep its minimum drinking age at 21. The federal law, strong-armed into existence by MADD in the 1980s, effectively bullied states into towing the neo-prohibitionist line. The minimum age is supposed to be a state decision, but no state could afford to leave money on the table so reason and common sense never had a chance, not when the decision was between money and screwing over the rights of young adults who probably weren’t going to vote anyway.

As recently as yesterday, MADD was still crowing that they’re responsible for reducing drunk driving deaths despite the fact that every unbiased economist believe the two are essentially unrelated. The truth is that drunk driving was already in decline in the 1980s, as evidenced by the fact that all age groups saw declines, not just 18-21 year olds.

The Wall Street Journal today has an interesting op-ed piece by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, entitled Old Enough To Fight, Old Enough To Drink.

He starts with the obvious argument that an adult who can fight to defend our country (and potentially die in that effort) should at the very least have all the rights and privileges of adulthood. But as a nation we are virtually unique in the world at denying our soldiers between the ages of 18-20 the right to drink alcohol. When I was in the military, we had a soda machine in our day room filled with cans of beer (I think they cost 50 cents) and we were allowed to drink at the bar on base, both at the base I was stationed at in Virginia and then later at my permanent duty station in New York City. Not one person at either location ever abused that privilege. A few got drunk from time to time, but never in a way that affected their responsibilities and their duty.

Which is why I’m so surprised by the military reaction. According to an NPR report, state military commanders have stated they believe it “would encourage unhealthy behavior.” I’m starting to think the military just can’t stand change of any kind, and will complain about any and every proposed change. I recall quite vividly that when I was in the Army, they made a big deal out of us working for civilians, that they were in charge and it was our duty to serve and follow orders. Yet every time some change is proposed to the military, the higher military ranks ignore their own rule and whine to high heaven. But their job is the same as the lowliest private: to shut up and follow orders.

Other complaints include that “[t]he law could set a precedent, said Rep. Alan Austerman, R-Kodiak, where any young person whose profession puts them at risk of losing their life, such as police or firefighters, could be allowed to drink.” Yes, and it’s a valid argument. Adulthood should include all the rights and privileges, not all but one. I don’t really understand how these people can look someone in the face and say, ‘sure you can risk your life, but you’re still not quite an adult yet, we still can’t trust you with alcohol.’ That’s deeply disturbing.

Other protestations include that it “could further increase drunken driving arrests of young soldiers who would drive back from off-base bars” and “[a]lcohol is involved in a third of misconduct incidents on Alaska’s military installation, three generals said in a letter to Rep. Dan Saddler, co-chairman of the House Special Committee on Military & Veterans’ Affairs.” But those are both absurd defenses. Soldiers would still be subject to the same laws as before, and suggesting that they might start breaking the law shows very little faith in them, doesn’t it? Essentially, I think it comes back to our unhealthy perception of alcohol, that people can’t be trusted with it, and therefore it has to be heavily regulated.

My own experience is that as a soldier at 18, my peers who either got jobs or went to college stayed more immature than the people I served with in the military, despite being the same age. As a result, for a while I was in favor of mandatory one-year conscription after high school because the discipline I believe was good for me and I could see how it might have benefited others, too. A few other nations do this, and I haven’t heard any arguments against it. I doubt that’s changed much, so it seems doubly troubling to me that the military is so set against this that they’d accuse their own men and women of being unable to handle alcohol, while expecting them to handle guns, grenades and other weapons. And doesn’t the statement that alcohol is already involved on military bases suggest that it’s the same problem that’s on college campuses, that having it be illegal is what’s causing the problems because it drives it underground?

One of the most telling statements in Reynold’s article is the following:

Research by economist Jeffrey A. Miron and lawyer Elina Tetelbaum indicates that a drinking age of 21 doesn’t save lives but does promote binge drinking and contempt for the law.

Safety is the excuse, but what is really going on here is something more like prohibition. A nation that cares about freedom—and that has already learned that prohibition was a failure—should know better. As Atlantic Monthly columnist Megan McArdle writes, “A drinking age of 21 is an embarrassment to a supposedly liberty-loving nation. If you are old enough to enlist, and old enough to vote, you are old enough to swill cheap beer in the company of your peers.”

And I love his political analysis at the end:

Democrats traditionally do well with the youth vote, and one reason is that they have been successful in portraying Republicans as fuddy-duddies who want to hold young people down. This may be unfair—college speech codes and the like don’t tend to come from Republicans—but the evidence suggests that it works. What’s more, the first few elections people vote in tend to set a long-term pattern. A move to repeal the federal drinking-age mandate might help Republicans turn this around.

Republicans are supposed to be against mandates aimed at the states, so this would demonstrate consistency. Second, it’s a pro-freedom move that younger voters—not yet confronted with the impact of, say, the capital-gains tax—can appreciate on a personal level. Third, it puts the Democrats in the position of having either to support the end of a federal mandate—something they tend to reflexively oppose—or to look like a bunch of old fuddy-duddies themselves.

Principle and politics. If the Republicans in Congress don’t pick up on this issue, we’re going to have to wonder what they’ve been drinking.

My guess is propagandist kool-aid. And while I believe that every eighteen-year old should be allowed to consume and purchase alcohol, it seems monumentally wrong that at the very least our brave young men and women who volunteered to serve and defend our peculiar way of life can’t drink a beer.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this, I received an interesting press release from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization in Washington DC that appears to lean toward the right or possibly Libertarian.

From the press release:

In most European countries the drinking age is far lower than 21. Some, like Italy, for example, have no drinking age at all. Yet, the rates of alcoholism and teenage problem drinking are far greater in the United States. The likely reason for the disparity is the way in which American teens are introduced to alcohol versus their European counterparts. While French or Italian children learn to think of alcohol as part of a meal, such as a glass of wine at dinner, American teens learn to drink in the unmonitored environment of a basement or the backwoods with their friends. A 2009 study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Health, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that 72 percent of graduating high school seniors already consumed alcohol.

Statement by Michelle Minton, CEI’s Director of Insurance Studies:

The current age limit has created a culture of hidden drinking and disrespect for the law. Regardless of whether a person is in the military or simply an adult civilian, he or she ought to be treated as such. If society believes you are responsible enough to go to war, get married, vote, or sign a contract, then you are responsible enough to buy a bottle of beer and toast to living in a country that respects and protects individual rights. It is long past time the law caught up with that reality.

The Mail Order Quagmire

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There was in an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times a few days ago. A wine blogger, David White (founder of the Terroirist), tackled the thorny issue of shipping wine (and beer and liquor) from state to state in a piece entitled Wholesale Robbery in Liquor Sales.

He begins with this obvious logic:

IMAGINE if Texas lawmakers, in a bid to protect mom-and-pop bookstores, barred Amazon.com from shipping into the state. Or if Massachusetts legislators, worried about Boston’s shoe boutiques, prohibited residents from ordering from Zappos.com.

Such moves would infuriate consumers. They might also breach the Constitution’s commerce clause, which limits states from erecting trade barriers against one another. But wine consumers, producers and retailers face such restrictions daily.

While he’s focusing on wine, the same is true for beer, too. When it comes to alcohol, the general rules of commerce tend to get thrown out the window because — gasp — it’s alcohol, and people can’t be trusted with the stuff. Therefore separate laws have to be set up to protect us from … well, I’m not sure from what. You can order all manner of dangerous things through the mail and have them sent right to your door, from guns and ammo, knives, crow bars along with all the stuff you need to make good size bomb. But try to get bombed and forget it. That’s where the line has been drawn.

It’s been over 75 years since Prohibition ended and few of the laws enacted to ease alcohol back into society have been updated much in that time. The way of the world, I’d argue, is quite a bit different than it was in 1933. The way people do business, both as companies and consumers, has changed dramatically but the laws governing alcohol have remained largely static, in large part because there’s always a hue and cry any time someone suggests relaxing or changing them. White points to wholesalers as having the greatest incentive to keep the status quo, and he’s certainly partly correct, but it’s also the anti-alcohol types and the overarching belief by many that because a few people can’t handle themselves with alcohol, that the rest of us have to suffer under these anachronistic laws that never envisioned the internet or considered that most adults might actually take personal responsibility for their actions.

At any rate, White makes some great points and his article is definitely worth a read.