The mainstream media, well El Paso, Texas anyway, is once again fanning the flames of fear with distorted statistics. They’re using the same misguided survey by the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) which others have already shown to be faulty at best and purposely distorted at worst, including Free the Grapes and myself, not once, but twice.

I’m sure this isn’t the only community newspaper trying to fan the flames of another prohibition, but they’ve used some clever tactics in their piece, whether inadvertently or not, that bear examining.

First let’s look at the title that Diana Washington Valdez of the El Paso Times uses for her story: “Youths use Web to buy beer, liquor.” Notice how wine is absent from the title? She does mention wine at the end of the first paragraph, but for the many people who only skim the headlines it reinforces the carefully managed stereotype of wine as angelic and beer and spirits as demonic. I don’t necessarily think this sort of thing is done consciously, but it shows how ingrained those perceptions really are. If you want to catch peoples’ attentions with a headline, pick on liquor and beer, wine won’t generate the same level of fear.

The article trotted out these recent gems:

Millions of underage youths are buying alcoholic beverages over the Internet or know someone who does, according to a survey commissioned by the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America in Washington, D.C.

The association also found that 20 states are easing up on the sales of alcohol from Web sites — without adopting corresponding measures to prevent youths from using such sites.

“This is a dangerous situation,” said Stan Hastings, association chairman. “For the first time, we have hard evidence that millions of kids are buying alcohol online and that the Internet is fast becoming a high-tech, low-risk way for kids to get beer, wine and liquor delivered to their home with no ID check.”

The survey is unique because news about the alarming trend comes from an organization that represents the alcohol industry.

This “millions of underage youths” is simply poppycock. The figure is just plain wrong. See my earlier post to take a closer look at how they arrived at this figure, but suffice it to say it’s not using anything resembling a scientific method.

What I find more interesting is that last sentence that while acknowledging that the study was done by an organization which, in their words, “represents the alcohol industry,” the author accepts that at face value. Not only doesn’t she question whether there’s any ulterior motive, but she even suggests that because the WSWA dd the survey that the results are more “alarming.” This is a person, mind you — I think they call them re-port-ers — whose job it is to find out and report the truth. Apparently never once did it occur to ask “why” the WSWA might have even sponsored such a survey. Now why is one of the five Ws in journalism, so I don’t think I’m off base here to expect her to ask that question.

Of course, if she had looked into the WSWA’s agenda, she would have discovered she had no story. Because the WSWA has just as much interest in scaring parents as the El Paso Times does. They don’t want internet sales of alcohol for one very simple reason: it will cut into their monopoly on alcohol sales. The WSWA represents the interests of wholesalers whose business depends on their maintaining exclusive territories to sell their wine and spirits. If someone else can sell alcohol in the same place they do, it will mean they’ll have to compete on price and they’ll no longer have a monopoly. So is it very surprising that a study they commissioned would find that sales they’re not making money on constitutes a problem? And, of course, the surest way to find support for yourself is to align yourself with protecting children. It’s always about the kids, never about the money.

Then the article turns to local concerns:

Another research finding is that little enforcement exists in this area, something that ought to concern parents.

Lt. Mark Decatur, an enforcement official in El Paso for the Texas Alcoholic and Beverage Commission, said the TABC conducted an operation two years ago aimed at identifying Web sites that made it easy for teenagers to buy alcohol.

“We found that a lot of people sold to kids over the Net,” he said. “The investigation used the children of TABC employees (as decoys) that used their parents’ credit card to place orders. Since then, we have taken steps in Texas to make changes in the law to address this.”

Of course, placing orders is not the same as the kids actually receiving any alcohol. They claim to have taken “steps” to address this problem, but unless I’m missing something, it’s been illegal to sell alcohol to underage kids for quite some time now, and delivering alcohol to any destination requires an adult signature. So if busy delivery persons don’t get the required signature, how is that the fault of the internet? And why should it inspire any fear whatsoever? It’s certainly not causing many arrests. As Texas liquor control spokesperson, Carolyn Beck, notes, “the commission does not have any enforcement actions on record for the past two years related to online alcohol sales to minors.” That’s because there are bigger problems, such as “[o]ne in five retailers are willing to sell to minors when they are looking right at them.” That’s obviously not something the WSWA cares much about, since they still reap the rewards of those underage sales.

The author concludes that “[f]or determined youths, none of these checks are impossible to get around.” Which begs the question if trying to stop internet alcohol sales doesn’t work, then why try to restrict such sales entirely since that keeps adults from obtaining goods which are legal for them. If what she says is true — and I suspect it is — what is the point of her article?

I grew up well before the internet age, and I had little trouble getting beer as a teenager. I’m not an alcoholic today. I work; I pay my taxes. By all accounts, I’m a responsible member of society. So what harm did underage drinking cause me? I rebelled a little bit, tried something forbidden at a time when I was struggling to find my identity. I was fumbling toward becoming an adult even before I really knew what that meant. So what? Let’s not forget our esteemed president went so far as to drive drunk and still grew up to be president. So perhaps this isn’t the big problem so many imagine it to be?

Perhaps when my kids hit their teens, they will likewise rebel a little bit. I hope not, and I’ll do my best to keep them safe, but there is a certain inevitability to it happening in one form or another. In the end there are a lot more things keeping me up at night besides whether they can buy beer over the internet. That so many people seem to care so deeply about this relatively insignificant problem, especially while there are so many other more pressing problems in the world today, says more about us than I care to think about.