The Science Of Parenting & Drinking

June 30, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Often times, science conducts studies that test theories that most of us pretty much take for granted. A few recent examples include the fact that too many meetings cause stress and unproductive employees (Group Dynamics, March 2005), objects are harder to see when they’re farther away (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Feb. 2005) and it’s harder to remember stuff and concentrate when you’re older (Journal of Experimental Psychology, May 2005). [From PopSci’s Science Confirms the Obvious.] I’ve always referred to such studies as “d’uh” studies, because the results are often so head-smackingly obvious. But they do have value since they do confirm and quantify things we take for granted and even occasionally disprove cherished beliefs.

A new d’uh study has just been published by the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The study, entitled Parenting Style, Religiosity, Peers, and Adolescent Heavy Drinking, was conducted by two sociology professors, Steve Bahr and John Hoffmann, at Brigham Young University.

Here’s part of the press release they sent out:

Parents may be surprised, even disappointed, to find out they don’t influence whether their teen tries alcohol.
But now for some good news: Parenting style strongly and directly affects teens when it comes to heavy drinking — defined as having five or more drinks in a row — according to a new Brigham Young University study.
The researchers surveyed nearly 5,000 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 about their drinking habits and their relationship with their parents. Specifically, they examined parents’ levels of accountability — knowing where they spend their time and with whom — and the warmth they share with their kids. Here’s what they found:
The teens least prone to heavy drinking had parents who scored high on both accountability and warmth.
So-called “indulgent” parents, those low on accountability and high on warmth, nearly tripled the risk of their teen participating in heavy drinking.
“Strict” parents – high on account ability and low on warmth — more than doubled their teen’s risk of heavy drinking.

About.com’s Alcoholism page added the handy chart below.

Researchers at Brigham Young University asked 4,983 adolescents between age 12 and 19 about their drinking habits and their relationship with their parents. As a result, the researchers identified four parenting styles:

Authoritative Parents: Rank high in discipline and monitoring (accountability) and high in support and warmth.
Authoritarian Parents: Rank high in control, but low in warmth and support.
Indulgent Parents: Rank high in warmth and support, but low in accountability.
Neglectful Parents: Rank low in support, warmth, and accountability.

It’s apparently only the first parenting type — Authoritative — that is effective in reducing binge drinking in teens. And that’s where the d’uh comes in. I’m going to guess that the authoritative style of parenting is more effective in a wide range of behaviors, because we’ve all seen or experienced the effects of other kinds of parents. Extremes are rarely a good idea. Too strict is bad, and so is too lenient. What a revelation! Goldilocks had it right after all.

But I would also suggest that such parents would teach their children about alcohol, possibly sampling them on it it a controlled environment, such as at dinner, teaching them about it, and modeling the behavior of moderate and responsible alcohol use. And these are exactly the kinds of steps that so many anti-alcohol groups are dead set against and have even made illegal in some states.

Anti-alcohol groups instead use fear and scare tactics to keep kids from drinking, a notoriously ineffective method. They preach abstinence and just saying “no.” MADD runs a program, with local law enforcement, where schools pretend a popular kid has been killed by a drunk driver and then use the grief (which is real to the kids) to scare them into pledging not to drink, causing all manner of emotional harm. These are not the actions of parents who are “supportive” and show “warmth” toward their children.

Curiously, while most news sources that picked up the press release titled their piece something along the lines of Parenting Style Influences Teen Binge Drinking, Parenting Style Can Prevent Teen Binge Drinking , Parenting style can prevent heavy drinking or Teens and Alcohol Study: After a Few Drinks, Parenting Style Kicks in, anti-alcohol groups ran a very different headline. For example the Mormon Times used the headline BYU study finds indulgent parents may aid binge drinking, ignoring entirely the fact that the study also showed that strict parents were similarly ineffective. In fact, not once in the entire article does the author ever even mention that “strict” parents — high on accountability and low on warmth — more than doubled their teen’s risk of heavy drinking.” Draw your own conclusions.

Likewise, the neo-prohibitionist organization Join Together titled their take on the study Being a Strict Parent Doesn’t Protect Against Youth Drinking, Study Says. As one commenter on their website points out, “shouldn’t the headline of this article REALLY read: ‘Kids with loving, engaged parents less likely to drink’? In other words, the STRICT-NESS of parents is not where fault lies. The headline is a bit misleading.”

But it makes sense in terms of such anti-alcohol policy and rhetoric, where the emphasis is always on the negative. Their whole focus was on what parenting styles didn’t work in keeping kids from binge drinking, ignoring entirely what was effective, at least according to the study. Why does that matter? I think it matters because it shows where the priorities lie with such organizations. They’re not interested in kids becoming responsible adult drinkers of alcoholic beverages. They want everyone to stop drinking, by force, coercion and whatever means necessary.

In the study’s abstract, the authors conclude as follows:

Authoritative parenting appears to have both direct and indirect associations with the risk of heavy drinking among adolescents. Authoritative parenting, where monitoring and support are above average, might help deter adolescents from heavy alcohol use, even when adolescents have friends who drink. In addition, the data suggest that the adolescent’s choice of friends may be an intervening variable that helps explain the negative association between authoritative parenting and adolescent heavy drinking.

In other words, it’s an upbeat attempt to figure out how to stop kids from binge drinking, suggesting what parental behaviors might be employed effectively. But having known my fair share of authoritarian parents (as well as overly indulgent), this is not something such people would respond to and it’s unlikely that many could change their behavior accordingly. As George Lasker explored in his book Don’t Think of an Elephant?, such parenting styles are fundamental to the values of various political groups and he believes a majority of conservatives follow the “strict father model,” which often (though no always) includes a lack of warmth — essentially what Bahr and Hoffmann describe as the authoritarian parent. Is there a connection? I would say “yes,” though I hasten to add that it’s probably not cut and dried. But in my own experience I would argue that many people who are politically and especially socially conservative are often the same people who are against drinking and are most likely to belong to a neo-prohibitionist group or at least be susceptible to their rhetoric, and that such group members disproportionately fall into that category.

So perhaps the real takeaway from all of this is that we should all be nicer to our kids, while not ignoring the obvious firm disciplines that are often necessary to teach important life lessons. If the findings in the ground-breaking NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, teach us anything, it’s that many of our cherished beliefs about how kids develop and learn are wrong. So it’s not a stretch to suggest that the conventional wisdom being used to stop kids from drinking is not working either. Kids are drinking and, if anything, are drinking more because they’re drinking underground and unsupervised. What we need to do is both model responsible drinking behavior and proactively teach our kids about alcohol in a warm and loving environment. D’uh.

Confirmation Of How SF Alcohol Fees To Be Applied

June 29, 2010 By Jay Brooks

san-francisco
I got confirmation last night on how exactly the proposed San Francisco alcohol fees will be applied. The actual language in the ordinance is incredibly vague and open to interpretation (and misinterpretation). My source has either spoken to several city supervisors or talked to others who have, a combination of the two, I believe. And here’s what we’ve learned. There’s good news and bad news, so to speak.

Despite the change in language — apparently an “ethanol ounce” is common European parlance — the proposed ordinance will still be applying the tax “per fluid ounce of alcohol,” forcing a lot of math and administrative headaches, to say the least. So every single bottle containing alcohol, even changing vintages, will require a formula be applied to it. For example, take a 12 oz. bottle of beer that’s 6% a.b.v. Here’s how it will work.

12 oz. x 0.06 (the % of alcohol) = 0.72 ounces of alcohol
0.72 x $0.076 dollars = 0.5472 cents “fee”
Rounded, presumably, to 5 cents or possibly 5.5 cents

To say the least, it will be an administrative nightmare — primarily for wholesalers, brewpubs and self-distributing breweries who will be filing the reports and paying the fee.

Here’s a few more examples of what the fee would be for various alcoholic beverages.

22 oz. bottle of 10% barley wine = 16.7 cents
750 ml bottle of 14% wine = 27 cents
750 ml bottle of 40% single malt whisky = 77 cents
15.5 gallon keg of 8% Pliny the Elder = $12.06

And let’s not forget that the fee will be imposed at the wholesale level, meaning that it will be marked up and the fee passed along to consumers at a much higher rate, and then marked up again by the retailer or bar, whoever sells it to you and me.

Alcohol Fees Vs. Taxes: The Sinclair Decision

June 25, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Warning: This post is primarily about arcane legal distinctions and standards that will (or should) be applied to what’s going on in San Francisco. If that’s not your pint of plain, you may want to ignore this post. Yesterday I dipped my toe in the mash tun that is the city of San Francisco’s proposed “Alcohol Mitigation Fee Ordinance” (AMFO). The reason they’re characterizing it as a “fee” instead of a “tax” has to do with politics. A fee doesn’t require a two-thirds vote like a tax, just a simple majority.

Another odd detail that’s missing is a requirement for this type of fee is that a Nexus Study be done, and the proposed ordinance does indeed make reference to it on Page 3, where they claim it’s on file with the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors but leave a blank space for the file number. The reason it’s left blank is because there is no completed Nexus Study, as required. The proponents of the ordinance claim it will be completed in a week, but then why didn’t they wait until it was done before introducing the fee ordinance? If that’s a requirement, it seems they’ve jumped the gun, and this will give opponents less time to review the Nexus Study, which doesn’t seem at all fair.

There’s also no mention in the language exactly how they will collect from companies who do business in San Francisco but have no offices in the city, and thus are outside the city’s jurisdiction?

The earlier draft version of the AMFO included the language “ethanol ounce.” While nobody was sure how that was being designed, it’s now moot because the final document changed the language at the 11h hour to “ounce of alcohol” which is still rather vague and subject to a variety of interpretations as to how it will be applied. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s possible that the strong spirits lobby got that change made since it would impact them the most by reducing their proportional taxes while beer would get hit the hardest. Curiously, all of the news reports I’ve seen, such as the one from KTVU Channel 2, a typical example, continues to use the phrase “ounce of ethanol” suggesting the mainstream media is working off of earlier versions or not looking at the source document at all. In either event, it’s not exactly stellar reporting and gives the public who reads that the wrong impression of what the AMFO will actually be doing.

sinclair-pinup

But the biggest hurdle is one that’s been in place since 1997, when the California Supreme Court decided the case of Sinclair Paint Co. v. State Board of Equalization, et al. In that seminal case, the state tried to impose a fee on paint companies for potential harm caused by lead paint. Here’s a summary, from the Pillsbury Tax Page: “The Supreme Court held that case law clearly indicates that the police power is broad enough to include mandatory remedial measures to mitigate the past, present, or future adverse impact of the fee payer’s operations, at least where, as here, the measure requires a causal connection or nexus between the product and its adverse effects.” [my emphasis.] What that means is that a “fee” of this type in order to be constitutional and not need a two-thirds majority like any other tax (in other words to keep its “fee status”) it must be proven to have a direct link to the harm being caused by the product being taxed … uh, excuse me, having a fee imposed on it.

In their conclusion, Pillsbury characterizes these fees as camouflaged taxes.

The potential impact of Sinclair is tremendous since it is completely dependent upon the Legislature’s propensity to camouflage taxes as fees. Virtually every industry can be found to place some type of burden on society and now the Court has only limited the Legislature’s ability to impose fees on those industries within the bounds of its inventiveness. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile Sinclair with the state of the law existing prior thereto.

And for the past thirteen years that’s been the standard and remains the controlling case. That means that the AMFO has to “prove” a direct link from the alcohol and the harm they claim is placing such an onerous burden on city resources. In the first two pages of the AMFO, they cite several studies they believe show such a link. But they’re wrong. For every study cited, I could produce ten that says the opposite, including studies that show that the moderate consumption of alcohol makes a person healthier than abstaining. To me, that suggests that trying to keep people from drinking is reckless endangerment or at least is putting the health of every adult who drinks moderately and responsibly at risk. And some of the studies mentioned aren’t even cited, meaning there’s no way to even confirm they say what the AMFO says they do. To say that their “proof” is shoddy is an understatement.

But, as usual, that doesn’t stop Bruce Lee Livingston, executive director of Marin Institute, from trotting out his favorite bullshit line, modified for the specific occasion. “It’s time for Big Alcohol, including wholesalers, to pay its fair share. A local alcohol charge for harm fee is long overdue.” I’m so tired of having to address this each and every time they give voice to this lie. As I’ve said many, many times, no other product save tobacco pays more taxes than alcohol already. To say that there’s some “fair” amount that alcohol companies should be paying is utter nonsense. There’s no amount high enough that would actually satisfy the Marin Institute, all they want to do in reality is put all alcohol companies out of business, the economy and a majority of people’s wishes be damned.

San Francisco Wants To Add Alcohol Fee To Every Drink

June 24, 2010 By Jay Brooks

san-francisco
They tried this last year, unsuccessfully, but the neo-prohibitionists are nothing if not incessant. So it’s now been introduced again. City of San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos has introduced the “Alcohol Mitigation Fee Ordinance” (AMFO) in an effort to impose a “fee” (which is technically different from a “tax” since that would be illegal) on alcohol sold in the city. They can call it a “fee” or anything they like if that makes it legal and presumably keeps their conscious clear, but a tax is defined as “a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on personal income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.” [Oxford Dictionary of English.] If it walks and talks like a duck, guess what it is? It’s complete and utter bullshit, not to mince words.

The stated rationale is that the “fee” is meant to cover the so-called harm caused by people who use alcohol by charging a fee to the distributors and retailers who sell it. For support of that idea, they cite studies that are nowhere near impartial. Essentially they just shopped for the studies that said what they wanted, ignored those that contradicted them, and used that to “prove” their case.

If passed, the AMFO would add a fee of $0.076 to every ounce of alcohol sold in San Francisco. So if I understand that correctly, for a 12-oz. bottle of beer that would be an additional 91.2 cents and for a pint another 121.6 cents, or roughly $1.22. And that fee will imposed at the wholesale level, and the distributors will then naturally mark-up the fee, and so will the retailers, meaning in reality the price of a pint will go up at least a dollar and a half, possibly more. The Marin Institute, who’s really behind this fee, is selling this idea as a “nickel-a-drink” because they’ve found that it polls well with consumers who see no problem with an extra nickel. But as is so typical with the Marin Institute, their “nickel-a-drink” propaganda is just another one of their numerous lies.

Earlier versions of the proposed ordinance used the term “ethanol ounce” presumably to equalize the alcohol content in different types of drinks, like spirits and wine which usually have higher alcohol percentages. The latest version appears to have dropped that, meaning that the fee on beer would be proportionally much, much higher than spirits or wine.

Where this whole idea came from is the despicable Marin Institute, an organization as anti-alcohol as one could imagine. They’ve been pushing this “fee” idea and using the rhetoric about “charge for harm,” which may sound good on paper but it’s entirely unfair to ordinary casual drinkers, which constitute the vast majority who drink alcohol. The Marin Institute claims that “Big Alcohol [should be] accountable for the tremendous harm its products cause. Appropriately taxing alcohol in each state and at the federal level will help reduce over-consumption, as well as provide much-needed funds for prevention and health care.” They hardly even say why that should be the case, so sure are they that people will just swallow that idea without thinking about it. But let’s think about it anyway.

Do the products actually cause any harm or do some people abusing the products cause the harm? Obviously, it’s not the alcohol itself, but its misuse that causes any trouble. If those people who abuse alcohol are straining the health and police resources of San Francisco, then the city should charge them. But saying that the alcohol those people abused should foot the bill is prima facie ridiculous. We don’t charge soda companies for all the unhealthy people that result from drinking pop, or red meat, or any other unhealthy foods that make unhealthy people thus placing a greater burden on our health care system. We don’t charge parachute companies or other extreme sports equipment manufacturers for increased use of emergency room facilities that are disproportionally called upon by extreme sports enthusiasts when “accidents” happen. We don’t put a tax on motorcycle purchases even though its more likely that a motorcycle rider will be involved in an accident, and/or that their accident will likely be more serious than if that accident occurred while driving a car, thus placing a greater burden on our healthcare system. I could go on and on. The point is that it’s absurd that alcohol companies should be responsible for any harm that an adult drinking one of their products might cause to himself or someone else. But the neo-prohibitionists keep on making that argument, regardless of how specious it is.

Even assuming their assertion that there is any “harm its products cause,” it’s still not everybody who drinks alcohol. This “fee” punishes everyone who drinks because it raises the price for everybody across the board. That means that the 99% of adults who drink responsibly and don’t place an undue burden on the city’s resources are forced to pay for the 1% that might. And yet the Marin Institute has no problem saying that’s not only fair, but how the world ought to be. According to them, alcohol has to pay for any harm someone who drinks it may cause, but every other product in the world does not. Why? Obviously, it’s not remotely about fairness or even funding healthcare for people who need it. It’s about punishing alcohol manufacturers and consumers who drink it in any way they can think of. They also claim that others states have similar policies in place, as if that makes it right, but then contradict themselves in their press release by stating that if passed, the “San Francisco alcohol mitigation fee will be the nation’s first local ‘charge for alcohol harm’ program, expanding on traditional nuisance and enforcement laws.”

What will this do to San Francisco’s business should it cost 30%+ more for a drink (or at least $1.25 and possibly as much as $2 more per pint) in the city versus the surrounding big cities like Oakland or San Jose? I think they’ll lose convention revenue, not to mention the nighttime and weekend influx from the Bay Area to the city. And tourism could take a hit, too. Not that any of those concerns are remotely part of the Marin Institute’s list of things they care about. How, or why, they cozied up to Supervisor John Avalos remains a mystery. He, at least, should care about what this might do to San Francisco’s economy. And don’t forget this is a test case. If it works and San Francisco does impose this “fee,” you can bet it will be tried in every metropolitan area where the neo-prohibitionists have a “friend” in local government. Alcohol is already the most taxed consumer good on the market today, but the wingnuts at the Marin Institute won’t rest until it’s taxed out of existence entirely. Yesterday, they took one more step closer toward realizing that goal.

marin-institute
Be afraid, be very afraid….

UK Wants Pubs To Be Responsible For Patrons

June 2, 2010 By Jay Brooks

pub-sign
According to an article in the UK’s Publican, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (or, ironically, NICE), which describes itself as “an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health,” has made several recommendations for tackling their nation’s alcohol abuse problems.

I’ll skip most of these. Not only have they been floated before, but I and many others have discredited them before. They recommend the old saws; minimum pricing, limiting the number of places in a given area where alcohol may be purchased and a total advertising ban. Most of them are nonsense, but here’s the one that sticks out this time around.

“Protection of the public’s health” should be added to the current licensing objectives.

What that means essentially, is that NICE wants pubs to be legally responsible for individual customers’ behavior as a condition of being licensed by the government to sell alcohol. There are already laws, at least on this side of the pond, where bartenders can’t serve a person who is obviously intoxicated or at least over-intoxicated. I don’t know if the UK has a similar law.

I’ve never liked these kinds of laws, because they’re overly paternalistic. They remove personal responsibility and place it on businesses, and their employees, to determine for someone when they’ve had enough. Now obviously, there are some people for whom their behavior makes this very easy and those people should not be served more alcohol. No bar I know wants to keep serving a belligerent or sloppy drunk. It’s not really good for business for a variety of reasons. These laws also give people an excuse to act irresponsibly, knowing they can always blame someone else, using the law to their advantage and avoiding any responsibility on their own part.

But what about the judgment calls? Only an individual can really determine when he or she has had enough. Yes, I understand that there are people who lose their ability to judge when they drink too much. Those people are usually pretty obvious about it. But this is about the minority abusers. The majority can self determine when to stop. But we keep trying to enact laws that affect everyone, even the people who are mature enough to take care of themselves in most situations. We always end of punishing everyone because of the actions of a few. That’s why paternalism is such a bad idea. The government has no business trying to protect people from themselves. There are plenty of other laws for alcohol abusers to break that don’t effect the responsible drinkers.

Then, of course, there’s the freedom to just get drunk if you want to. I wouldn’t advocate this as a lifestyle, but every now and again it feels good to get rip-roaring drunk. As long as you didn’t drive, made plans on how to get home and aren’t bothering other people, why shouldn’t you be allowed to get and maintain yourself in a drunken state? What business is it of the government to try to make sure that never happens, at least not in public. And yet there are laws against public drunkenness? Why?

And the notion that this is about the “public health” is laughable when it’s aimed only at alcohol. At least beer has many proven health benefits. Soda has no health benefits or nutritional value whatsoever, yet no one’s advocating we cut people off when they’ve had too much soda pop. We still sometimes have soda machines in our schools. The obesity and poor health caused by a diet of soda places a burden on any nation’s health care system, yet where’s the hue and cry over that? Red meat has a lot of protein, but over-indulging in eating it can cause many health problems that similarly tax healthcare. Why are restaurant owners allowed to serve someone as big as steak as they want? Why isn’t there a push for legislation limiting the amount of bacon that can be served at a Sunday brunch? Sounds ridiculous, right? But it’s exactly what NICE is proposing. We only find it funny when it’s not about alcohol. With alcohol, we accept that it has to be regulated in such a fashion.

But that’s just years of anti-alcohol propaganda to the point where most people accept that alcohol is inherently evil. It’s not. It can’t be. Alcohol just is. It takes each individual person to determine their own relationship with it. And most get along with it just fine. The great majority of adults can and do drink responsibly their entire lives. No intervention necessary. And that percentage would be even higher if we were allowed to educate our kids about it, if it didn’t carry such a ridiculous stigma created by people opposed to it and if it wasn’t constantly under attack by such people.

I would never argue that there aren’t people who shouldn’t drink or who are unable to handle themselves around alcohol. There will always be such people, just as there are junkies, over-eaters and addictive personalities of every stripe. We cannot eradicate such people or problems by punishing everyone else who doesn’t abuse alcohol, or whatever else we’re trying to stop from being abused. But time and time again, that’s what well-meaning (I continue to hope) government agencies and organizations continue to propose. It’s a shame for the rest of us that they never, ever, work.

Ontario Declares Santa Claus Only For Kids

May 28, 2010 By Jay Brooks

According to the Canadian National Post (sent in by an alert reader — thanks Brian S.), the LCBO — the Liquor Control Board of Ontario — has banned the Christmas beer Samichlaus, from Schloss Eggenberg. Here’s the reason, if you can even call it that.

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has decided the beer’s label contravenes rules against advertising to children. It features the name of the beer, Samichlaus, a Swiss-German nickname for the saint behind the Santa Claus legend, and a small black-and-white bearded figure.

It’s apparently a violation of “section 1(4) of the commission’s advertising guidelines, which prohibits liquor packaging aimed at children.”

Samichlaus

But the notion that Santa Claus, and by extension Christmas itself, is exclusively the domain of children is absurd on its face. But set that aside for a moment, and look at the label. Have you ever seen a less kid-friendly label? Nothing pulls in kids like a brown label, almost devoid of holiday colors. And the image of Santa Claus they believe puts children at risk? As the article suggests, the label’s image looks more like an “old fisherman [o]r a weather-beaten hobo.” I just see an old man with a beard and a nondescript hat; anything but someone kids would be drawn to the dark side over. How could any reasonable person look at that label and conclude it’s “aimed” at marketing to children?

Of course, Santa Claus — or St. Nicholas — is also the patron saint of brewers and the brewery only makes Samichlaus once a year, on December 6, which is his saint’s feast day.

I’m not sure why this issue keeps coming up, apart from some people seem to have some very strange ideas about who Christmas is for and who gets to decide. And that brings us back to this idea that Santa Claus somehow only appeals to children and is not for adults. I don’t know who the adults are who feel this way, but they must be some of the least empathetic, most stingy, unfeeling curmudgeonly people on the planet because for me the spirit of Santa Claus is about giving, regardless of age. I’m 51, a devout non-believer, and I love Christmas and especially the idea of Santa Claus. And I know I’m not alone on this one.

What’s perhaps most unsettling, is that the entire province has been mobilized to eradicate this scourge of Samichlaus based on a “single complaint from a private person.” Yes, that’s right. One person didn’t like the label and now the rest of the people in the province will be deprived this great beer. Nice going, jackass. This seems to keep happening — in the UK, Philly, San Diego and elsewhere — where the opinion of one person seems to matter more than the collective sensibilities of a whole community or society.

In an earlier post, I referred to this as the “tyranny of the minority,” but perhaps the better question is why government agencies spring into action over just one complaint? With a large population and just a single (or even just a few complaints) shouldn’t the silence of the many be taken into account, too? Ontario has an estimated population of just over 13 million people (as of last year) yet access to a (very good) product has been removed from the entire population because one guy didn’t like it. This is not how decisions should be made in a democracy or even in a “federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy.”

What Is Beer?

May 24, 2010 By Jay Brooks

A provocative question to be sure, but not one I’ll even try to answer. Instead, take a look at how that question was answered 70 years ago by the the United Breweries Industrial Foundation in an ad they ran in the January 15, 1940 issue of Life Magazine. On page 69 of Life, they answer the question “what is beer?” eleven different ways.

what-is-beer

At the bottom right, there’s also an address where you can send away for a booklet with the “facts.” I’d love to see a copy of that booklet. It’s interesting what they were probably trying to accomplish with the ad, shining a light on all of the positive aspects of beer and distancing themselves from the negative, no doubt with many people at that time still remembering the prohibition era criminal elements. That’s why they argue that brewers want “to clean-up or close-up the small minority of law-violating places which abuse the license to sell beer. The brewers want to protect your right to buy beer in decent, respectable surroundings.” It makes sense, of course, that the new post-prohibition brewing industry wants to get off on the right foot, reminding people what good there is in their continuing to be in business, especially while the prohibitionist organizations were still hard at work, despite being dealt the near-death blow of prohibition being over-turned less than a decade before.

Below are close-ups of the eleven answers proffered to the question “what is beer?”

Employment Manager

wib-manager

Tax Collector

wib-taxcollect

Farmer

wib-farmer

Dietician

wib-dietician

Business Man

wib-businessman

Housewife

wib-housewife

Doctor

wib-doctor

Police Chief

wib-police

Brewer

wib-brewer

Poet

wib-poet

Average Citizen

wib-consumer

I just love the fact that “Poet” is included. It makes me want to write more poetry. And how many of you know a brewer who looks, or dresses, like this one? But most of these are just hilarious, though undoubtedly true, they’re statements you rarely see stated in ads nowadays. Still, I’d really like to see more pro-beer ads today. I think we need them now more than ever.

Stopping Underage Reading

May 20, 2010 By Jay Brooks

websites
This continues to just piss me off — I know, what doesn’t? — but it’s resurfaced again in a HealthDay News report on the television website for Channel 13 WTHR Indianapolis. The article, Alcohol Companies Use New Media to Lure Young Drinkers: Report, is about the time-honored practice of believing that current times are the worst they’ve ever been (not like when we were young) and today’s youth is in more danger (not like the innocent times when we were young). Every generation seems to go through these machinations that the corruption of the young is either a new phenomenon or is far worse now because of some modern innovation that wasn’t around (in those innocent days when we were young).

Today’s bogeyman is the “latest new media technologies — including cell phones, social networking sites, YouTube and other features of the expanding digital universe — [used] to reach young drinkers.” Or at least so says a new report, Alcohol Marketing in the Digital Age, by American University in Washington, D.C. The report naturally singles out Facebook, MySpace and other social media and the web more generally as the new moral vacuum where our youth is being corrupted. It’s slightly more grounded than many of these types of reports, but it’s still fairly alarmist of the-end-is-nigh if we don’t do something variety. The fact that every older generation is afraid for the younger generation and pretends to be protecting it by trying to stop some imagined danger makes such arguments fall flat for me.

But here’s the bit that continues to chap my hide:

One area the study authors want officials and activists to look at is weak age-verification mechanisms, pointing out how easy it is for a young person to enter a false birth date so they are legally “of age” to enter a Web site.

Yet I’m not aware of any website that can dispense beer or any other alcohol. All you can do at the average website is — drum roll, please — read. So why on earth do you have to be 21 to read? Could someone check out a book about beer at the local library if they were under 21? Of, course. But online, now that’s dangerous. Until it’s against the law to read then no one has to be “‘of age’ to enter a Web site,” whether it’s about beer or anything else. Trying to keep people from information, even if it’s perceived to be the wrong sort of information, is a very slippery slope. And frankly, keeping people in the dark about something that’s supposedly bad for them keeps them from the truth, forming their own opinions, and exposes them only to the “approved” message, which is often laced with propaganda and misinformation to promote a specific agenda. That’s in part, at least, why so many people today fall for neo-propagandist arguments about the evils of alcohol. As long as the propaganda is so one-sided and people, young or otherwise, have no access to a balance of perspectives, then ignorance will continue to rule the day, as it so often does.

Henny Youngman was probably the exception to the rule when he quipped “when I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” Unfortunately, more people probably believed what they read and gave up drinking. And that will continue to be the case if we continue to keep people from reading about things that others believe to be dangerous. That’s the very definition of a society that’s not free. Now I need a drink. See how dangerous this all is?

Kenya’s Kill Me Quick Moonshine

May 15, 2010 By Jay Brooks

An alert Bulletin reader (thanks Jason) sent me a link to a story in the Economist with similarities to an earlier post I did, Poisoning People During Prohibition: A Disturbing Parable, in which the African nation of Kenya is battling the problem of illegal moonshine occasionally made with jet fuel or embalming fluid. Kill me quick, Kenya’s lethal brew deserves its name is an interesting read. A native moonshine concoction known as chang’aa is causing problems for both the government and a good portion of the nation’s youth. Chang’aa is a fermented drink brewed with corn (maize) and sorghum.

The problem is, unscrupulous moonshiners are speeding up the fermentation by adding stolen dangers like rocket fuel … well, jet fuel, antifreeze and embalming fluid. Those things, it goes without saying, are not something you should drink, even diluted. According to the article, “10ml of methanol can burn the optic nerve; 30ml can kill.” Also, police raids have turned up other unsavory things in the moonshine: decomposing rats, excrement and women’s underwear. As the Economist points out, the word chang’aa means literally “kill me quick” and is well chosen. For the equivalent of one U.S. dollar, you can buy four glasses, and the adulterated chang’aa has killed more than a few and blinded still others.

The reason people drink it is because most people in Kenya live in grinding poverty and can’t afford legitimate alcoholic drinks like beer. Beer there is so heavily taxed that only the rich can afford it. Surprisingly, no one but the breweries are suggesting that perhaps the taxes could be lower so poor people don’t have to risk death to drink alcohol. East African Breweries, “one of Kenya’s biggest companies and taxpayers,” unsurprisingly “wants to see illicit chang’aa replaced with a safer commercial version.” That would undoubtedly involve lowering alcohol taxes and despite the fact that it might actually save lives the government is concerned that “bringing the price of alcohol down to that of water risks increasing alcoholism and forcing the very poorest into even dodgier booze dens. In any case, it could add other costs: crime, violence to women and children, unsafe sex and bad health.” None of those are good, but are they worse then death? It’s the old alcohol as entirely evil argument writ large.

kenya-moonshine
Chang’aa

This is an interesting case to me because it’s taking the idea of how taxes affect consumption to a whole new level. Neo-Prohibitionists in the U.S. have long argued that higher taxes will decrease consumption and especially access by young people. It’s been their stated rationale for many attempts at pushing higher excise taxes on alcohol. But there’s obviously a threshold where that starts to backfire. In Prohibition, for example, removing it completely (in effect, the same as making it too expensive) didn’t stop people from drinking, it simply drove it underground. And in this real world example, Kenya’s taxes are obviously too high such that it’s driven people to drink illegal — but affordable — alcohol. Ours haven’t reached that point yet, despite the best efforts of the anti-alcohol wingnuts. As one commenter succinctly put it:

When a given chunk of economic activity contains a fair mix of illegal and legal business, controlling the illegal part by increasing the regulations of the legal part is illogical and ineffective. On the other hand, if the great majority of the market can eventually be brought into the legal realm, then there is room for regulations to reduce whatever damage it might cause. The legal recreational drugs in most of the world, alcohol and tobacco, are regulated and taxed to the point where if the prices were much higher, an illegal market would likely develop. For example, when cigarettes in Canada were taxed to a price of roughly 2X that in the US, some serious smuggling began. Thus, when Kenya should do is first enable unadulterated legal alcoholic drinks to be sold at a price that’s competitive with the rotgut the drunks are now stuck with. Even habitual drunks will pay a small premium for safety and known potency.

In fact, the UN estimated that half of Kenya’s alcohol trade is for the illegal moonshine, suggesting that the taxes for the legal drinks is way too high. But apparently it’s harder to give up the tax revenue than create a safer world for Kenya. Instead, crackdowns are the order of the day, as Kenya to Sustain War Against Brews. In typical jack boot fashion, ignoring any root causes, “Internal Security Minister Professor George Saitoti says the government will not relent on its war against the production and consumption of illicit brew in the country.” Yeah, that’s going to fix the problem. Unfortunately, it’s a typical response. It’s easier to beat people with a cudgel than understand their problems and try to fix the underlying causes. Obviously, people don’t actually want the risk of death associated with their choice of drink, but the fact that so many are willing to take such risks is indicative of a deep-seeded problem. It seems to me that the accepted propaganda that all alcohol is evil causes such bad decisions because governments seem more worried about not going against the propaganda than they are about finding actual solutions.

While not easy by any stretch of the imagination, the best solution to Kenya’s problems is to improve the life of its poorest citizens. That would do more to quell the moonshine than virtually anything else they might try, and it would certainly be better than using police powers and violence. The strong arm approach never works in the long run. But I suppose as long as the U.S. is the model, that’s what other nations will try, too. Our enforcement of Prohibition was pitifully ineffective and caused more deaths than people it saved, I’d warrant — including purposely poisoning people in the name of enforcement — and our current “war on drugs” is similarly having the same useless effect, making the problems associated with drug use actually worse and guaranteeing the criminal element, and the violence that brings with it, too. Until we realize that such methods will never work, other nations will continue to look to us for guidance will and fail as miserably as we have. More’s the pity.

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