The “Blame the Parents” Strategy – On Steroids
One continuing alcohol industry issues management strategy has been to shift the responsibility for underage drinking away from those who profit from underage drinking (10-15% of total alcohol sales in the US) to the kids themselves and their parents. This is not only apparent in industry-produced “educational” materials which offer branded fuzzy, simplistic solutions, but in policy measures like Cops in Shops.
Wisconsin Senate Bill 358 takes that approach to its ridiculous extreme by allowing alcohol beverage licensees to sue parents of kids under 18 who procure alcohol in their establishments. The licensee would be entitled to $1,000 (plus costs and “reasonable” attorney fees) which is actually more than the fine ($500) the state levies against those who sell to minors.
If the sponsors of this bill really want to tackle underage drinking, they should increase the price of alcohol and investigate the alcohol industry’s practices of luring kids with products like marshmallow-flavored vodka and saturating kids with digital alcohol marketing. But, then again, that might not go over well with their buddies at the Tavern League of Wisconsin.
Reference:
Mosher, J. F. (1995). The merchants, not the customers: resisting the alcohol and tobacco industries’ strategy to blame young people for illegal alcohol and tobacco sales. Journal of Public Health Policy, 16(4), 412-432.
Sliding Toward Saloonery
The AP reports that White Castle is experimenting with adding booze to its menu:
The companies see alcoholic beverages as a growth opportunity after years of flat sales, said David Henkes, a vice president with the Chicago-based food research firm Technomic. “Alcohol is one of those things that is extremely profitable to the operator,” he said.
Just one more example of the erosion of the firewall between a well-regulated alcohol control system, and a pathogenic culture of nearly unlimited access and availability. Add it to the list of alcohol-serving movie theaters, laundromat/bar combos, and kiddie restaurants that serve just enough alcohol to trigger grown-up violence.
Plugged in 24/7: Digital Alcohol Advertising & Youth
The Center on Alcohol Marketing & Youth highlights the insidious nature of digital alcohol marketing:
Brochure available here.
ALEC & the Alcohol Industry
The African American advocacy organization Color of Change is setting its sights on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for its role in “pushing discriminatory voter ID legislation that suppresses the votes of blacks, the elderly, youth and other minorities.” Specifically, Color of Change is seeking to pressure the corporations that underwrite ALEC to withdraw their financial support.
According to the Sourcewatch site for the Center for Media and Democracy, alcohol companies which have been involved with ALEC include Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller. Currently, Diageo’s Vice President of Government and Trade Relations, Kenneth Lane, sits on the ALEC Private Enterprise Board.
Diageo, like many other major alcohol producers, publicly celebrates “diversity” with its employee resource groups like the African Heritage Employees at Diageo (A.H.E.A.D.) and the [GLBT] Rainbow Network. Yet, in light of Diageo’s affiliation with anti-democratic groups like ALEC, this embrace of diversity appears to be just another tactic to soften up target markets.
Deregulatory Kool-Aid
The New York Times declined to publish the following letter to the editor, in response to the op-ed piece “Wholesale Robbery in Liquor Sales,”
To The Editor:
David White’s call for deregulation of our alcohol control system (“Wholesale Robbery…,” 4/4) is telling for its comparison of direct shipping of alcohol to that for books and shoes. In truth, as the World Health Organization has stated, alcohol is “no ordinary commodity” and thus cannot be treated like a pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps or a Patricia Cornwell paperback. We are, after all, talking about the third leading root cause of death in the US and the leading preventable cause of birth defects and intellectual disabilities.
In fact, the three-tier system of alcohol distribution was put in place precisely because of this product’s special nature. But the powerful multinational corporations who dominate alcohol production (conveniently omitted from Mr. White’s narrative) and their retail allies will brook no limit on profits, and work feverishly to deregulate our alcohol control systems through litigation and lobbying.
We need to remember this before we drink Mr. White’s deregulation kool-aid.
Robert S. Pezzolesi, MPH
New York Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions
Complicating the picture is the 
fact that the Times is in the online wine business through the New York Times Wine Club.
Of Kids and Alcohol Brands
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending (and presenting a poster at) the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting & Exposition in Denver. One particularly compelling presentation was Descriptive Epidemiology of Brand-Specific Alcohol Use Among Underage Youths, which presented the initial findings of the first national survey of youth alcohol brand preference.
The significance of brand preference in relation to underage drinking reminded me of the tragic death of Kaitlin Kozlowski, a 16-year-old who was killed in a single-vehicle crash in the Town of Clay in Onondaga County, New York in 2005. The driver of the automobile was 17 and alcohol-impaired, and the victim’s best friend.
Is DISCUS a “Special Interest”?
If DISCUS is “completely neutral” on the issue of the privatization of alcohol sales in control states, why is it taking such a special interest in the matter?
In attacking the Marin Institute’s timely report on the mad rush to dismantle control state systems, DISCUS resorts to a tired pejorative that has, nonetheless, been ubiquitous in the current contentious political climate: “special interest.”
photo by Steve Wilhelm
And, yet, which is more of a “special interest” group: a non-profit working to improve public health and public safety, or a trade organization that aggressively works for the “normalization” of its product, while funding character attacks on legitimate public health practitioners?
It should also be noted that the Marin Institute does not have its own Political Action Committee (PAC).
Partners in What?
A recent article in the Washington Post illustrates the quagmire inherent in “partnerships” between industries and the government agencies charged with regulating them:
MMS’s [U.S. Minerals Management Services] acquiescence stemmed from the unusual relationship it had cultivated with industry. Directed by law to “meet the nation’s energy needs,” the agency chose to pursued [sic] that mission by declaring itself publicly and formally as industry’s partner.
Can industries that profit from potentially harmful products and practices truly be “partners” with government and non-governmental organizations that work to stem their harms? Or will the asymmetries invariably produce some form of regulatory capture?
“Deregulation”? Is that even a real word?
One of the more breathtaking recent examples of Orwellian doublespeak comes from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) in their criticism of the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act of 2010 (HR 5034).
They argue that any protection of state-based regulation is unnecessary, because, in reality, there is no “deregulation” (it is a “supposed threat”).
This from the trade organization that bragged about their “unprecedented series of market modernization victories that rolled back Blue Laws across the nation.” And just last month, they cheered the fact that 43 states “eased their tasting laws” as “part of a larger movement to modernize state alcohol laws to cater to consumer demand …”
Another Brick in the Wall (of Evidence)
Broad, population-level measures which affect overall alcohol consumption have an advantage over targeted strategies (although both are necessary and desirable ) in that wider measures can impact several problems at once.
Case in point: Increases in alcohol taxes/prices have been shown to reduce underage drinking, traffic fatalities, and sexually transmitted diseases, with indirect evidence that they reduce chronic heavy drinking prevalence and alcohol-related health problems (Cook, 2008, p. 167).
Now comes yet another brick in the wall of evidence that increases in alcohol price/taxes are beneficial to the public health.
Characteristic facial features in a child with FASD (from Wattendorf & Muenke, 2005, p. 279)
A recent study in the International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health found that even a modest $0.01 increase in alcohol taxes would result in 1-2% fewer cases of low-birth-weight (Zhang, 2010).
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a devastating – yet under-diagnosed and seldom discussed – condition. It’s the leading preventable cause of intellectual disabilities and birth defects, with lifetime costs estimated at $1-5 million per victim and total costs to the U.S. (direct and indirect) of about $5.4 billion per year (NOFAS, n.d.).
As Zhang notes, modest alcohol tax increases could prove to have intergenerational positive significance.
References:
National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome [NOFAS] (n.d.). FASD: What everyone should know [fact sheet]. Retrieved on May 3, 2010 from http://www.nofas.org/MediaFiles/PDFs/factsheets/everyone.pdf.
Wattendorf, D.J. & Muenke, M. (2005). Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. American Family Physician, 72(2), 279-285. [Free full text]
Zhang, N. (2010). Alcohol taxes and birth outcomes. International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 7(5), 1901-1912. [Free full text]
