Binge Drinking Excuses From The OLCC

December 29, 2010 By Jay Brooks

olcc
Just in time for New Year’s Eve — a.k.a. Amateur Drinking Night — the OLCC has released yet another PSA, this one featuring the message “Binge Drinking Doesn’t Start With A Drink. It Starts With An Excuse.” The video lists four presumably common excuses for drinking too much, though frankly I’ve never heard another living soul say them, not even a variation of them. I’m not saying the excuses aren’t something to avoid — they are — but they don’t seem all that reasonable to me. Perhaps I don’t hang around with enough binge drinkers, despite theoretically being one myself (at least at every five-course or more beer dinner I attend, since the federal definition is absurdly five drinks in a row). As a result, like their other PSAs, it appears well-meaning but unintentionally a little funny. I’m of the opinion that people who want to binge drink don’t need any made-up excuse. They do so for their own reasons, no excuse necessary.

And frankly, this needs to be said. If someone wants to drink a little too much on occasion — such as a holiday celebration — I say they should be able to, provided they don’t drive or otherwise put others at risk. As the saying goes, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

The United States of Abstinence

December 13, 2010 By Jay Brooks

no-yes
There was yet another interesting piece in his month’s Playboy, an essay toward the back by Jessica Warner, the author of a recent book, All or Nothing: A Short History of Abstinence in America. Her essay, The United States of Abstinence: How Saying No Became A Distinctly American Practice, is definitely worth seeking out, but here’s the salient bits.

She begins by outlining the history of the idea of abstinence itself.

In no place other than America has the idea of abstinence — whether from food, drink, drugs or sex — taken root so deeply. Your federal tax dollars are currently being used to tell kids to put off sex until they enter into a “biblical marriage relationship.” The 1980s gave us Nancy Reagan and her antidrug mantra “Just say no.” A century earlier, Anthony Comstock crusaded to outlaw smut, penny dreadfuls and contraceptives, while Frances Willard led America’s women in a fight against demon rum. There have been so many crusades it is easy to forget that at one time, in the 17th and 18th centuries, abstinence meant only one thing to Americans: no sex until marriage. The idea that people should abstain from all other vices first appeared in the 1830s. What began as a campaign against distilled spirits suddenly morphed into a campaign against all forms of alcohol and then against all other “stimulants” — tea and coffee, pickles and spices, meats and apple pie, fancy clothes and double entendres, narcotics and soft mattresses, and, last but not least, sex with oneself.

She then quickly outlines the early influences of religions, and how different Christian denominations reacted differently to temperance sentiments based on their own interpretations of scripture, and specifically a peculiar idea, or doctrine, known by different names, such as “Christian perfection, sanctification, the second blessing or holiness.” That notion was essentially the “touchstone for abstinence in America.”

That idea leads adherents “to believe [people] can overcome sin in its entirety” and so “Christian perfection and abstinence are mutually reinforcing concepts of extreme behavior.” These manifest themselves into “a declaration of all-out war on sin.”

temperance-rider

Not every denomination feels as strongly, but the stronger that commitment, “the more likely it encourages abstinence.” And in places like Great Britain, for those same reasons the idea of abstinence never caught on in the same way. There, church leaders like John Wesley — of the Methodists — believed their “religion does not lie in doing what God has not enjoined or abstaining from what he hath not forbidden.”

Among modern evangelicals, the Pentecostals have the strongest commitment to Christian perfection and the highest rate of teetotalism, reaching 70 percent. In contrast, Baptist churches vary in their commitment to perfection, and their overall rate of teetotalism, under 55 percent, is correspondingly lower.

And the Baptists, who over the last few years have had their leaders come out very publicly against alcohol, are not all in agreement at any rate.

When the Southern Baptist Convention recently attempted to reaffirm its “total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing and consuming of alcoholic beverages,” its younger members objected, complaining that the resolution needlessly “draws a line in the sand.” For the modern evangelical, abstinence effectively means one thing only: saying no to sex outside marriage. There is a certain irony in all this, for in drawing the line at the sins of the sexual revolution, modern evangelicals have, quite despite themselves, returned to the status quo ante, that is, to the looser moral code of America before the great evangelical revivals of the 1800s. The interesting question is whether the list of taboos will continue to shrink and, if so, what will be the next thing to go.

To me, that’s a fascinating question as anti-alcohol groups appear to be gaining influence, especially politically, while younger generations seem generally less interested in their rhetoric. I’ll be very interested to read the entire book, All or Nothing: A Short History of Abstinence in America, which I ordered right after I finished the article.

Eliminating Drunk Driving 100%

December 12, 2010 By Jay Brooks

So I was reading through the new issue of Playboy magazine that came last week when I came upon an article entitled 15 Innovations That Will Change the World. Some pretty impressive ideas, but the one that stood out for me was “Robocars,” cars that drive themselves using sophisticated sensors, omni-directional video-cameras, radar detectors and advanced GPS systems.

robocars

But what really surprised me was this. “[A]dvocates say robocars will be ferrying many of us hither and yon by 2020. Most major car companies have an autonomous car division, crafting future driverless cars right now.” Holy crap, we’re only a decade away from robocars! Even with them most likely being too pricey initially for most people, give them another ten years after introduction for the price to come down, and that means a majority of us will be able to afford them. That would mean in just twenty years it’s conceivable few people will be doing their own driving anymore.

That could mean the end of drunk driving, mobile phone distractions and all manner of driver error accidents. It’s somewhat surprising given how much potential there is for robocars to virtually eliminate DUIs that the anti-alcohol groups have been completely silent about them. Instead, MADD is pushing the ridiculous ignition lock technology. Why aren’t they supporting robocars? Why aren’t they and the other non-profits supposedly committed to curbing drunk driving and keeping the roads safer funding research into the technology to make robocars a reality even sooner?

That’s not a rhetorical question, I really want to know why they’re not doing more to support robocar technology. Could it be so cynical a reason as it would make them irrelevant and make it almost impossible for them to raise money? If I’ve learned anything about non-profits lately it’s that they’ve become permanent institutions whose paid employees are actually no longer incentivized to carry out their organization’s mission to its conclusion because doing so would put themselves out of work in the process. When was the last time a disease or societal problem was actually solved and/or eradicated? Polio? Small Pox? Yet there are so many more non-profits compared to thirty plus years ago, when I was a kid. But the only thing they seem effective at is creating scary statistics and propaganda to make whatever the issue is as dire as possible and raising money.

But back to the Robocars, meet Junior:

junior-1
Junior, a self-driving prototype, created using a mostly stock 2006 Volkswagen Passat, which is the same car I drive, though mine’s a few years older and doesn’t include an autopilot, sad to say.

VW is financing the creation of both Junior and his brother Stanley at Stanford’s Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, and the car company is funding VAIL, too. The research center was dedicated last year.

junior-2
Inside the back of Junior.

junior-3
Inside the back seat of Junior.

And below is a video of one of Junior’s test drives.

Frankly, I can’t wait until the day I can stop driving and leave it to the computers. I’ll be able to drink more without having to worry at all, especially about the draconian laws associated with drinking and driving. They should be a thing of the past, though I imagine one or two groups will fight this new technology tooth and nail. Police and local governments will most likely hate this, because it will remove one of their biggest revenue streams. I’m willing to bet they’ll question the “safety” of the robot drivers and try to block their implementation as long as humanly possible.

But apart from that, this seems like it would be the proverbial win-win for everybody else. Brewers along with bars and restaurants that serve it would likely see a dramatic rise in business without the chilling effect of our current laws and lack of viable mass transit alternatives. In theory they could even save money by no longer having to spend marketing dollars on those “drive responsibly” campaigns.

MADD and the other anti-alcohol organizations should be in favor of it because it would literally eliminate drunk driving for everyone who purchases one of the Robocars. Unfortunately, I believe that some of the anti-alcohol folks, and especially MADD, are not really interested in stopping drunk driving, but instead have shifted their focus to eliminating alcohol altogether. Of course, that will also stop drunk driving, too, but at the expense of destroying so much more: the economy, people’s livelihoods, the health advantages of moderate drinking, quality of life and simply enjoying a drink.

But watching the actions and policy decisions of these groups for as long as I have, I honestly think they’d prefer that result to one which would actually eliminate needless deaths while keeping the alcohol industry intact and even benefiting its business. None that I’m aware of have ever done anything to encourage or support alternate modes of transportation such as building mass transit infrastructure as a way of keeping people who’ve been drinking off the roads. Between that and their silence on Robocars it makes it hard not to at least question their true motives. With the very real possibility that drunk driving could be eliminated 100% in just twenty years (or less) it seems reasonable to expect that supporting that technology would at least be part of their policy and/or strategy. That they don’t, I think, speaks volumes. Show me the Robocars!

Happy National Repeal Day: A Video

December 7, 2010 By Jay Brooks

nbwa
The NBWA (National Beer Wholesalers Association) posted a short video yesterday celebrating the 77th anniversary of the ratification of the 21st Amendment, ending Prohibition, which occurred December 6, 1933. It’s never too late to celebrate that. Enjoy.

Gilbert Arizona Declares Family & Beer Incompatible

December 5, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Thanks to Rob Fullmer (a.k.a. olllllo) at Beer PHXation for letting me know about this weirdness. Arizona recently relaxed its 2005 law regarding the sampling of beer, wine and spirits in grocery stores. But one town mayor, John Lewis of Gilbert, Arizona, isn’t happy that someone might be able to have an ounce or two of alcohol, especially if he happens to be in the vicinity of that tasting with his children.

According to the Arizona Republic, he thinks having his kids see people even sipping alcohol will have untold consequences and will undo his careful parenting to, presumably, keep his children from ever seeing demon alcohol anywhere throughout their lives. Here’s how the Gilbert mayor put it:

Lewis recently called on local grocers to “withstand the temptation” to offer free taste-testing of beer, wine and spirits at their stores. He said his family frequently shopped at Sam’s Club, for example, and he would not want his children to be in an atmosphere where alcohol could be sipped.
“For the image and preservation of what has been building Gilbert as a family-centered community, I hope we would not approve the sampling privileges in a family environment,” Lewis said.

I love Fullmer’s response in Beer PHXation:

Apparently Lewis, a grown man, finds the task of teaching his children about the responsible and legal enjoyment of alcohol (or the abstention of it for that matter) in the mere presence of adults tasting 1 or 2 ounces — while still maintaining a code of conduct suitable for the likes of a Sam’s Club — capable of erasing years worth of parental upbringing.

Having a family environment and an educational and informative environment for alcohol use are not mutually exclusive, in fact, the family environment IS the proper environment.

Precisely. What exactly is the problem with seeing adults having a simple taste of alcohol in a responsible, legal environment? This is the sort of modeling behavior we should want our kids to see. Lewis is so far off the deep end that he’s not just upset that his kids might actually see people drinking, he’s even bothered by “an atmosphere where alcohol could be sipped.” [my emphasis.] That means just the thought of there being a place where alcohol “could be sipped,” that there’s a possibility it might happen, is enough to worry him. That he could walk past even an empty roped off area, children in tow, is just too much for him to bear.

Not to get too personal, but according to his bio, he’s been married for 29 years, has 8 kids and 4 grandchildren. The likelihood that he even has impressionable little kids to actually walk through the grocery store with seems somewhat unlikely. So what he’s doing is just political grandstanding.

But his suggestion that somehow sampling alcohol is incompatible with family I find most offensive. I have a family. Countless brewers and beer lovers have families and see no contradiction with the two. That’s because there is no contradiction. Adults can enjoy a drink responsibly without damaging their family. People have being doing so for time immemorial. Why is is that some people believe that there is only one way to parent … their way?

When the bill passed the state legislature, only one representative voted against it, republican Andy Biggs, whose district includes — you guessed it — Gilbert. For him, it was all about the doughnuts, to wit:

“I go in with my kids to go get doughnuts at the Safeway,” Biggs said. “It’s one thing to walk through the liquor department to go to the bakery, but it’s something else when you’ve got people there serving alcoholic beverages.”

Seriously, it’s about his freedom to buy doughnuts without seeing alcohol? What exactly is wrong with these people? Why is it “something else,” whatever that even means, if there is beer sampling? I feel confident he could take another route to reach the bakery. But failing that, if it’s such a big deal couldn’t he just buy his doughnuts somewhere else? Nothing against Safeway, but they’re not exactly the gold standard for pastry.

It just feels like, based on their nonsensical comments, that this is personal for both politicians. And they’re using their positions to force their own issues with alcohol on the rest of the people they represent, in a way that feels out of touch with the average person’s opinion. Obviously, it’s hard to know how any community feels about so complex an issue as alcohol, but I feel confident in saying that a majority of people there do at least drink it.

The original impetus for the bill was to give local alcohol manufacturers a chance to compete locally by allowing Arizona beer and wines to be sampled. As you might expect, Todd Bostock, president of the Arizona Wine Growers Association, believes that “most families wouldn’t be offended by in-store sampling because they already consume alcohol at the dinner table in front of their children. The more kids are exposed to responsible drinking, it won’t be a foreign thing to them,” Bostock said. “It’s not taboo.”

It certainly shouldn’t be, and based on the 54-1 vote it would appear most people agree.

Colorado To Make Session Beers Illegal In Bars & Restaurants

November 29, 2010 By Jay Brooks

This should give anyone who loves session beers or groups trying to keep people from getting blotto a case of apoplexy. A new law in Colorado, actually a bill amended last spring, “now requires the state to enforce license restrictions to a T.”

The law requires to-the-letter enforcement of the state’s existing beer regulations. Bars, restaurants and liquor stores can sell only beer that is above 4 percent alcohol by volume. Grocery and convenience stores are allowed to sell only alcohol with less than 4 percent alcohol by volume.

So this is coming from the C-stores and groceries trying to protect their turf of low-alcohol beer. But the consequences are absurd, and will make it essentially illegal for any restaurant or bar to serve patrons beer that’s below 4% a.b.v. According to the Denver Post’s report, Stout Opposition to Looming Limits on Selling Lower-Alcohol Beer in Taverns, Restaurants, “[t]echnically, bars, restaurants and liquor stores in Colorado should never have sold the lower-alcohol beers in the first place, though no one ever paid much attention. Their licenses allow them to sell spirits, wine and beers that fall into the ‘malt liquor’ category.”

The original purpose of the law stems from the post-prohibition period when many laws enacted to regulate alcohol tried to limit access to it. Though Prohibition was a rousing failure, temperance groups merely shifted tactics and locally many of those early laws were an attempt to make it more difficult for alcohol to flow freely again as it had prior to 1920. Colorado’s answer was to enact laws that strictly specified which products could be sold where and that’s why modern Colorado has its peculiar alcohol landscape. But until now, the law restricting beers below 4% a.b.v. in bars and restaurants was not enforced. Increasingly, convenience and grocery stores saw that as a threat to their exclusive right to sell low-alcohol beer but were blocked time and time again from doing anything about it … until now, that is.

As is often the case, following the money does lead us to the answer. It’s about business, of course. I love this quote from Jason Hopfer, a C-store lobbyist. “Either stop selling the product we sell, or let’s stop having this false delineation on beer. Let’s let beer be beer.”

Yes, let’s let beer be beer, by all means. That is the obvious solution. To do that, we’d have to do away with Colorado’s ridiculous division that brands “beer” as anything under 4% a.b.v. and anything over it as “malt liquor.” That would be best for society as a whole, for the brewers and anyone who believes drinking lower alcohol beer while out in public is a safer idea. But as you might expect, the businesses that have benefited from these state-mandated monopolies for over 75 years are loathe to level the playing field. I think it’s simply an unknown. It doesn’t appear certain who would benefit or be hurt the most if all Colorado businesses could sell any strength beer. But it would change things considerably. And change is scary.

As the Denver Post story makes clear, nobody in the effected trade groups seem particularly concerned because they believe that when the next session of Colorado’s state legislature begins in early January, that the obvious absurdity of what this law would create will be addressed and fixed. Maybe, I’ve never followed Colorado’s state politics too closely so it’s hard to know how reasonable that belief is. But surely some of the politicians who supported this amendment with the language it currently uses had to know what the actual consequences would be. That’s perhaps the scariest thing of all, that they could accept the business argument in this case, ignoring the all too obvious negative repercussions. Save the Session Beers!

Blue Laws In Decline

November 24, 2010 By Jay Brooks

USA Today had an interesting report that more and more states are finally relaxing their antiquated blue laws and allowing alcohol to be — gasp — sold on Sundays. In the article, entitled Sunday Alcohol Sales Are on the Rise in U.S., it is revealed that “[s]ince 2002, 14 states have joined the list of states allowing Sunday sales of [alcohol], bringing the total to 36.” But that means there are still 14 more states, plus D.C., that prohibit Sunday sales of alcohol.

According to Dvaid J. Hanson, author the wonderful website, Alcohol: Problems and Solutions:

A blue law is one restricting activities or sales of goods on Sunday, to accommodate the Christian sabbath. The first blue law in the American colonies was enacted in Virginia in 1617. It required church attendance and authorized the militia to force colonists to attend church services.

As Wikipedia adds. “Most have been repealed, have been declared unconstitutional, or are simply unenforced, although prohibitions on the sale of alcoholic beverages, and occasionally almost all commerce, on Sundays are still enforced in many areas,” despite the fact that Sunday is the second busiest shopping day of the week.

As Lisa Hawkins, with the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, put it, “[b]lue laws … simply don’t make sense in today’s economy. They inconvenience consumers and deprive states of much-needed tax revenue.” But economy aside, you’d think people would recognize that the origin of these laws to it to force religious practices on everyone, despite principles of religious freedom and not all citizens following the same faith. Apparently, you’d be wrong. One naysayer, Bruce Beckman (a council member in Downers Grove, Illinois who voted against modifying local blue laws), is quoted as saying he voted against changing his community’s blue laws because the “relatively small amount of tax revenue this might generate isn’t as important as using Sunday mornings for family, going to church … and not sitting in a bar somewhere.”

To me that’s an unbelievable rationale. I can hardly fathom someone holding such an opinion in 2010. Nobody’s stopping him from attending church or spending the day with his family, but that he believes he has the right to force everyone else in his community to do likewise is deeply offensive. It’s absolutely none of his business how I choose to spend my Sunday and that he thinks he should actively keep it illegal to do something he personally doesn’t care for is a tyranny, no matter how slight or small.

Happily, such outmoded points of view are visibly in decline, as evidenced by the increasing number of states doing away with these old-fashioned laws. Below you can see which states, in white, are still behind the times.

blue-laws-map

The Chicago Beer Market

November 22, 2010 By Jay Brooks

chicago
Chicago Business has a lengthy, but interesting, article online about the beer market in the windy city. It’s entitled Pay-to-play infects Chicago beer market, Crain’s investigation finds, and was written by a trio of reporters: James Ylisela Jr., David Sterrett and Kate MacArthur.

Corruption, of course, infects virtually all business everywhere and while Chicago has an elevated reputation because of its history, it seems to me what is exposed here is happening in many places. When it comes to the smaller breweries, most just understand that they can either go along with it or not, based on their own individual company philosophy. I don’t think it makes any one of them good or bad, it’s just different responses to the markets in which they’re trying to sell their products. In a sense, there’s a trade off with the three-tier system. It has advantages and disadvantages that manifest themselves in different ways in different states. That’s what the film Beer Wars tried to expose, which is simply the uneasy way in which the beer industry actually works.

But give it a read and let me know what you think. Oh, and be sure to read all the comments, too.

Coffee Stouts Saved

November 17, 2010 By Jay Brooks

fda
Finally some good news out of the knee-jerk ruling by the FDA to ban drinks mixing alcohol and caffeine. To their credit, they’ve put up a Questions and Answers: Caffeinated Alcoholic Beverages page. Question No. 7 answers the concerns of brewers and fans of coffee stouts, along with other craft beers that have caffeine in them as a result of ingredients that add a variety of flavors, too. The question and answer is below in its entirety.

Does This Action Apply to Coffee-Based Liqueurs?

No. These Warning Letters are not directed at alcoholic beverages that only contain caffeine as a natural constituent of one or more of their ingredients, such as a coffee flavoring. The alcoholic beverages that are the subject of FDA’s Warning Letters are malt beverages to which the manufacturer has directly added caffeine as a separate ingredient.

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