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Global Be(er) Responsible Day

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Today, Anheuser-Busch InBev is promoting a new holiday focusing on safe and responsible drinking behavior and especially using designated drivers. They’re calling the effort “Global Be(er) Responsible Day.” From the press release:

More than 1,500 Anheuser-Busch employees across the United States won’t be at their desks on Friday, Sept. 23. Instead, they’ll be out visiting bars, restaurants and grocery stores to promote the use of designated drivers.

It’s all part of Global Be(er) Responsible Day, an annual effort organized by Anheuser-Busch and its sister companies around the world.

“For three decades, Budweiser has been leading the way in the promotion of designated drivers,” said Kathy Casso, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility for Anheuser-Busch. “Our programming to encourage responsible drinking takes place all year long, but on Global Be(er) Responsible Day our employees are making an extra push to spread the message in partnership with wholesalers, retailers and many other partners.”

TAKE THE PLEDGE

Casso and Finger encourage adults to show their friends they care by visiting Budweiser’s Facebook page, clicking on the “Bud DD” tab and pledging their support of designated drivers. Where legal, consumers who take the pledge may be eligible to win a prize from Budweiser.

“The vast majority of adults enjoy our beers responsibly and we have made progress in reducing drunk driving,” Casso said. “So let’s all work together so we can keep moving in the right direction. By visiting Budweiser’s Facebook page and signing up to be a designated driver, you can show you support the important role that designated drivers play in enjoying the great times.”

DESIGNATED DRIVER FACTS

In conjunction with Global Be(er) Responsible Day, new research from GfK Custom Research North America was released showing promising news in the area of designated driver use and awareness, including that 64% of American adults — or 141 million people 21+ — have been a designated driver or have been driven home by one.

The 2011 Designated Driver poll also showed that 86 percent of respondents think that promoting the use of designated drivers is an excellent or good way to help reduce drunk driving. The full survey results are available at alcoholstats.com.

LIFE-SAVING RESEARCH

On Thursday Anheuser-Busch will host in St. Louis a meeting of a working group of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, an independent group of law enforcement experts, at its corporate headquarters. The group recently released a report, Effective Strategies to Reduce Drunk Driving, and will be in St. Louis to continue their research as they search for proven strategies to reduce drunk driving on American roadways.

A lot of progress has been achieved in reducing drunk driving, according to the group’s 2010 report, but experts agree there’s still more work to be done.

TIRF’s ground-breaking research on the nation’s DWI system has been supported by Anheuser-Busch for more than 20 years.

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Now sure it’s P.R. designed to show ABI in a positive light, but that doesn’t make it automatically bad. It’s still a good effort and deserves to be acknowledged. In fact, ABI is composed of people who do care is people die driving drunk. ABI is comprised of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunt, uncles, etc.; people like you and me. I may not always agree with ABI’s business practices or like a lot of their products, but I’ve known many good people, past and present, who work for A-B, and now ABI. They’re not the monsters that Alcohol Justice (nee the Marin Institute, before they re-branded themselves the new moral sheriff in town) and the other anti-alcohol groups make them out to be.

But you can hear the deafening silence of Alcohol Justice, and the others, applauding ABI’s effort. You’d think the self-styled alcohol “industry watchdog” would be able to praise, as well as criticize. You’d think that’s what an observer would, and should, be able to do. But naturally, their website is completely silent, preferring to communicate only what alcohol companies do wrong, which is everything. I’m convinced they can’t even conceive of ever portraying any alcohol company being praiseworthy for anything. As long as I’ve been watching the watchdogs, they’ve never once said anything positive about any alcohol company.

But the message of driving responsibly and using designated drivers is a good one, and efforts to raise awareness of the issue should be applauded, regardless of where they come from. So I, for one, say good job ABI, for promoting Global Be(er) Responsible Day.

Slate’s Anti-Alcohol Hatchet Job

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Slate
I used to think of Slate’s online magazine as cutting edge stuff, but lately their coverage, at least of things I know something about, shows them to be staunchly conservative. Given that they’re owned by the Washington Post, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

Today an article by William Saletan on the web titlebar is known by the more balanced title “MADD vs. Rick Berman’s American Beverage Institute: Who’s Right About Drunken Driving?” but on the webpage itself by the much less so “Mad at MADD: Alcohol merchants say you shouldn’t donate to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Really?” (I’m hardly perfect, but I still can’t help but point out it’s not usually referred to as “drunken driving,” but “drunk driving.”)

The article itself is all smoke and mirrors, and starts out by trying to sound reasonable, before veering way off the rails of reasonableness, much like MADD itself, who the author wastes no time in defending. What got apparent MADD-shill William Saletan’s hackles raised was that someone had the temerity to suggest that the neo-prohibitionist organization was not ready for sainthood. Specifically, the American Beverage Institute released a press release pointing out that “Mothers Against Drunk Driving Receives Another ‘D’ from Charity Rating Guide.” The fact that their press release is true seems not to matter, nor is the fact that this is not the first year that MADD’s rating as a charity has been called into question. Saletan accuses the release of “shouting,” as if a press release could shout without turning on the ALL CAPS. Hey Bill, LISTEN UP; that’s how you shout in print.

But his real beef is that he seems to believe that the ABI shouldn’t be allowed to criticize MADD since they’re a trade organization that represents the interests of alcohol producers, therefore anything they have to say on the subject is suspect. It’s an argument that has some merit, but only if it works both ways. MADD has been twisting facts for decades, but when they do it it’s in the service of a higher purpose, therefore it’s allowed, one has to guess.

Then Saletan goes on to accuse the ABI of having its own agenda, that of weakening drunken-driving regulations and claims that essentially ABI wants people to drive drunk, and they probably hate dogs and children, too. I’m exaggerating — only slightly — but the point is that he takes the position that everything ABI does is evil and everything MADD does is benign and well-intentioned. The irony, of course, is that nothing could be further from the truth.

Saletan argues that “ABI has fought MADD on nearly every alcohol-related issue” and that “ABI doesn’t argue for moderation,” despite the fact that the top of their home page includes the phrase “Drink Responsibly, Drive Responsibly.” His dripping sarcasm would be easier to take without such hypocrisy. He doesn’t seem to acknowledge that there might even be a reason why the ABI might oppose an organization like MADD, whose very being is to undermine every aspect of the alcohol industry. MADD, and other neo-prohibitionist organizations, have been attacking the alcohol industry virtually non-stop since prohibition ended yet Saletan doesn’t seem to believe that the ABI even has the right to defend themselves.

The fact that he refers to the ABI as using “extremism” is almost laughable, especially given his own attempt to smear ABI president Rick Berman by using examples of non-alcohol lobbying and companies. He suggests that while he doesn’t “know enough about MADD’s finances to tell you whether MADD is the best investment of your charitable dollars,” he “can say this: Any organization Berman has vilified is probably worth giving money to.” Saletan ends by stating that “if they’re [other non-profits] pissing off Rick Berman, they must be doing something right.” Well, at least that’s not extremism. Nothing personal there. Just some nice, balanced reporting like any good mainstream news outlet. Present the facts and let the reader decide. Uh-huh.

Saletan conveniently ignores that even MADD found Candy Lightner left the organization she founded several years ago because of their growing extremism.

MADD also ranks poorly with another charitable giving guide. Charity Navigator gives MADD an overall rating of 1 of 4 stars, the lowest level rating reserved only for a charity that “fails to meet industry standards.”

These dismal ratings reveal a shift in MADD’s mission. In the words of its own founder Candy Lightner: MADD “has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”

No surprises there. Saletan’s screed is typical. He ignores what doesn’t fit his personal world view and rails against everything else. He also states that “ABI is waging PR wars” against MADD and others, while MADD’s own warlike propaganda campaign is not even acknowledged.

Curiously, ABI is pretty much the only alcohol trade group I know of that consistently fights back against MADD and the other anti-alcohol groups. Most try to get along as best they can, a fool’s errand IMHO. It didn’t work for Neville Chamberlain, and I don’t believe appeasement will work in this case, either. So, naturally, ABI has to be vilified. How dare they defend their livelihoods? How dare they defend themselves when attacked? We in the alcohol industry are pure evil, or so it seems every time I read one of these hatchet jobs. But somebody has to shout back. Somebody has to remind these people that the majority of alcohol drinkers do so responsibly and in moderation. Somebody has to point out that there are, in fact, at least two sides to every story. Too bad Slate decided only one side needed to be told.

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

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monster-beer
In a particularly ugly display of shameless greed and naked propaganda, the Marin Institute is using summer scare tactics to fuel their fund-raising efforts. Essentially their reasoning goes as follows. The summer advertising for sweet, malt-based beverages that come in colorful packages — like Four Loko, Jooce, Sparks, Blast, etc. — is “targeting” your children and must be stopped. Because underage kids like things that are sweet and colorful, therefore it’s “shameless youth exploitation.” Send us your money today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Politics Of Never Being Satisfied

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The anti-alcohol Marin Institute had a little item in one of their e-mail missives a few days ago, reporting on the news that Anheuser-Busch InBev announced that they would be lowering the alcohol content of their Tilt from 12% a.b.v. to 8%. You’d think that the anti-alcohol groups that have been whining about these drinks to high heaven would be at least be a little pleased that the beer company has bowed to their pressure. You would, however, be wrong. That’s because the fanatical nature of the politics they’re peddling can never, ever be satisfied until there is no more alcohol to be sold, despite their insistence that they’re not neo-prohibitionists. Nothing any alcohol company ever does will be viewed as anything but wrong, no matter how well-meaning. My favorite example is still when A-B canned water and sent it to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The Marin Institute even complained about that because Bud had the temerity to put their logo on the cans and send out a press release. Of course, they complained about that in their own press release, but when they do it it’s apparently for a higher purpose.

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

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

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

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

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

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Graduation & Prom Drinking

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Apparently prom season and graduation time is coming up, because the scary statistics that always accompany this time of year are also starting to appear. Now before the angry comments start filling my queue, I’m not encouraging drinking at either, and especially not drinking and driving, no matter what the occasion. There are, however, some curious features about this time of the year about how we still try to scare our kids into staying sober for prom and graduation that bear scrutiny.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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scientist-mad
Join Together and the Partnership For a Drugfree America yesterday sent out an item in their e-mail blast entitled Teens Who Drink with Adult Supervision Have More Drinking Problems, Study Finds. Alarming, right? Likewise, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s went even farther with this misleading headline: UW study: Teens don’t need parents as ‘drinking buddies’.

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

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

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

So from that, the two articles conclude the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mad_scientist

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.

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.

Old Enough To Fight, Old Enough For Beer

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under-21
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.