Alcohol News: April 2005


AMA Asks NCAA to Ban Booze From the Airwaves
MedPage Today, April 27, 2005
The American Medical Association has asked the National Collegiate Athletics Association to ban beer and other alcohol ads from TV and radio broadcasts of college sporting events, including bowl games and March Madness.

The AMA's "no booze" campaign is aimed at "combating under-age drinking," said AMA president John Nelson, M.D., a Salt Lake City obstetrician/gynecologist.

NCAA Division I officials, at a meeting Thursday in Indianapolis, are to review the organization's policy on beer ads during radio and television broadcasts of NCAA events.

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Basketball Without Beer Ads?

Low Carb and Light Beers Spur Growth of Female Beer Consumption
Progressive Grocer, April 29, 2005
Women are driving much of the growth in the U.S. beer market, thanks to their interest in low-carb and light beer products, according to new research by independent market analyst Datamonitor here.

The group's report, which examines trends in the $78 billion U.S. beer, cider, and Flavored Alcoholic Beverages (FABs) market, finds that 30 percent of the volume of beer consumed in the U.S. is being guzzled by females. Although 'healthy' beer options aren't solely targeted at them, Datamonitor said these products are fueling this rise.

Following the launch of low-carb beers, the U.S. beer market is beginning to witness a recovery. Valued at $73.1 billion in 2003, the U.S. beer market grew by only 0.1 percent year on year. However, in 2004, value increased by 0.8 percent, reaching $73.8 billion. Datamonitor expects this recovery to continue.

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Beer Industry Taps into Fitness

Community Efforts Can Reduce Alcohol Fatalities
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, April 28, 2005
Communities can decrease alcohol-related fatal crashes by providing better access to substance abuse treatment while reducing the availability of alcohol in the community, according to a new study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A report of the study appears in the April, 2005 issue of the journal Injury Prevention.

"These results show that concentrated, community-wide interventions can save lives," notes NIAAA Director Ting-Kai Li, M.D. "This is the first study to explore the effect of the combined use of increased individually-oriented substance abuse treatment and environmental strategies to reduce alcohol availability."

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Hispanic Market New Toast of Wine Industry
HispanicBusiness.com, April 27, 2005
For decades, Latinos have picked the grapes for world-renowned Napa Valley wines. Now, they are being courted by those same wineries as the newest generation of wine drinkers. . .

Only a few wineries and businesses have embarked on such efforts so far, but marketing experts predict more will follow.

. . .For some Latinos, though, this push to nurture more Latino wine drinkers comes with some concern.

"Alcohol can be a dual-edged sword," says Luis Arteaga, executive director of Latino Issues Forum in San Francisco, which accepts no alcohol or tobacco company funding because of its work on health initiatives. . . .cirrhosis of the liver kills Latinos more often than Americans of other origins.

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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Alcohol ads taking aim at women, youth
Daily Nebraskan, NE, April 22, 2005
Six girls surround one man, mouths gaping in enthusiasm.

The man’s attention is focused on one thing - the breasts of the girl in front of him, whose single item of clothing seen is a red bra.. . .hard alcohol companies have learned how to advertise their products as beer - or as “everybody’s drink” - and there has been an increase in the number of ads directed toward women, Workman said.

"Making alcohol ads and marketing products appealing to women is nothing new," said Laurie Leiber, media advocacy manager for Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog.

“From the marketing point of view … young men do the most drinking, and (beer companies) already have what they need from them in buying beer,” she said.

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Alcohol Ads Aplenty in Teen-Read Magazines

Drunk Driving Accidents On the Rise Again: Binge drinking linked to increase in road crashes
Health Central, April 22, 2005
The decline in drinking-related auto accidents that began in the early 1990s may be over: A new survey suggests Americans are hitting the bottle more often now before they hit the road.

Alcohol-related auto accidents went down by slightly more than 1 percent a year from 1993 to 1997, dropping from 123 million incidents to 116 million, according to a the report, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.Unfortunately, that number has started rising again, increasing by 37 percent between 1997 and 1999 alone, and reaching a total of 159 million drinking-related accidents per year by 2002.

The number of people killed in drunk-driving accidents also has risen, from 16,573 in 1999 to 17,013 in 2003, added Dr. Kyran P. Quinlan, who worked on the report while at the CDC. Quinlan is now is a clinical associate in pediatrics at the University of Chicago.

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CDC: American Alcohol, Health Ideas Wrong
San Francisco Chronicle, CA, April 19, 2005
The government Tuesday warned that a few drinks a day may not protect against strokes and heart attacks after all.

Some studies in recent years have touted the health benefits of moderate drinking. Some have even said that up to four drinks a day can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease in people 40 and older.

But researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data from 250,000 Americans who participated in a 2003 telephone survey. They found that the nondrinkers had many more risks for heart disease - such as being overweight, inactive, high blood pressure and diabetes - than the moderate drinkers.

Based on those results, the agency could not say that moderate drinking actually was a factor in reducing the risk of heart disease.

The findings were published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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Health Care Costs of Alcohol

More U.S. College Students Drinking and Driving
Reuters Health, April 19, 2005
The number of US college students who drive while intoxicated has risen to 2.8 million, new study findings indicate.

Heavy drinking is a regular habit for many college students, studies show. A 1999 survey found that nearly one-quarter of college students say they binge drink
Reporting in the 2005 issue of the Annual Review of Public Health, the authors found that college students were more likely to both binge drink and drive while intoxicated than 18- to 24-year-olds who were not attending college.

Previous research has also shown that screening people and providing those at risk of alcohol problems with counseling can reduce the risk of alcohol-related problems, Hingson said. . . .

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Preventing Alcohol Problems on College Campuses
Low-Priced, High Volume Sales of Alcohol Available to College Students

Report: Allied agrees to $14B takeover by Pernod, Fortune
USA Today, April 20, 2005
British drinks company Allied Domecq has agreed in principle to a $14.2 billion takeover offer from rivals Pernod Ricard of France and the USA's Fortune Brands, people familiar with the deal told wire services Wednesday.

Allied Domecq's board has accepted the broad outline of the offer, but some details remain to be settled before the agreement can be completed and announced, a source told The Associated Press. That could happen as soon as Thursday, the person said.

Pernod and Fortune have agreed to divide Allied's brands - including Ballantine's whiskey and Beefeater gin - between them, Reuters says.

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Domecq's Drink to Anything
Allied Domecq's Sauza Tequila Ad Promotes Reckless Drinking

Monday, April 18, 2005

Dad Defends Teen Drinking Party
60 Minutes CBS, April 17, 2005
Consider a stunning statistic: Between 10 and 20 percent of all the alcohol consumed in this country is drunk by kids who are underage.

It’s an epidemic that leaves parents facing agonizing choices -- parents like Bill and Pat Anderson in West Warwick, R.I. When their son, Gregg, asked to throw an after-prom party with alcohol at their home, their first response was, "No way."

But then, Gregg told them the party would be at a local beach instead -- and that got them thinking. At the beach, there would be no supervision, and everyone would have to drive home. At their house, they could lay down some rules.

Gregg Anderson was 18 years old at the time, the youngest of the Andersons' three sons. The Andersons say they’d seen too many kids in their town lost to drunk driving, so they decided that a party with rules was the safer way to go.

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Adults and Underage Drinking

You Must Be Over 21 to Drink in This Living Room: A crackdown on house parties stirs up a debate about privacy
TIME Online, April 11, 2005
Officials in Stratford, Conn., convened a group of middle and high school students last year to quiz them on their attitudes toward alcohol. The officials were dismayed, if not surprised, when the teens reported that they thought alcohol, unlike tobacco and other drugs, was largely harmless, that binge drinking among their peers was habitual, and that drinking enough to pass out was funny. But the officials were perhaps most displeased to hear that the place kids most often got drunk was their own or their friends' homes and that some parents either provided alcohol or looked the other way if teens brought it to drink in the backyard or basement.

Spurred in part by that information, the Stratford town council is considering an ordinance that would allow police to enter a private residence if they suspect someone under 21 is consuming liquor, even if adults are present. Dubbed the house-party ordinance, it has been adopted in 43 of the state's 169 municipalities, but in Stratford it has split neighbors between those who see the measure as a way to curb underage drinking and those who argue that it undermines parental authority and violates privacy rights.

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Cost of Underage Drinking
Adults and Underage Drinking

Survey will explore Hispanics' alcohol use: Largest study of its kind will poll people in Houston and 3 other cities
Houston Chronicle, TX, April 13, 2005
With the aid of a $4.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers have launched a five-year study of Hispanics and alcohol use in Houston and three other American cities.

The study, the largest among Hispanics ever conducted in the United States, will survey 6,000 people in Houston, New York City, Miami and Los Angeles. Interviews began in January and are expected to continue through the end of the year.

"This will help us fill a major gap in epidemiology among Hispanics in the United States. We know some things, but there's so much more we need to know. We're talking about a group that makes up 12 or 13 percent of the population. In a few decades it will be 25 percent," said the principal investigator, Dr. Raul Caetano, professor of epidemiology and assistant dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas.

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Alcohol sales to minors slowing
Montana Standard, MT, April 17, 2005
More stores are passing undercover compliance checks as Butte police continue inspections to limit alcohol sales to minors, results from a second wave of checks show.

Sixty-one percent of stores passed the first wave October through December by requesting identification and refusing alcohol to underage buyers working with police.

That compliance rate jumped to 81 percent after the second wave January through March.

"The reason that has gone up is that businesses are aware that we are going to do compliance checks and we are going to do them on a regular basis," said Sgt. Jimm Kilmer, the program coordinator.

Kilmer hopes even more stores will pass future inspections.

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Alcohol and Youth Facts
Responsible Beverage Service

Vermont Considers Lowering Drinking Age to 18
New York Times, NY, April 13, 2005
Last fall, Richard C. Marron, a Republican state representative, was reading a newspaper column by the recently retired president of Middlebury College, John M. McCardell Jr.

One of Mr. McCardell's targets was the drinking age, which in Vermont, and every other state, is 21.

"The 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law," Mr. McCardell wrote, saying it had led to binge drinking by teenagers. "Our latter-day prohibitionists have driven drinking behind closed doors and underground."

Mr. Marron, a four-term legislator who is vice chairman of the appropriations committee, decided that the law needed changing, and he has introduced a bill to lower the drinking age to 18, setting off a debate about public safety, age discrimination and the rights of young people as well as whether it is possible to teach teenagers to drink responsibly.

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Tuesday April 12, 2005

Bud Light Accused of Trivializing Alcoholism in New Ad
CSPI, April 8, 2005
A new ad for Bud Light beer depicts men joking about lies they've told to cover up their daytime drinking, and two watchdog groups say the Federal Trade Commission should crack down and ask Anheuser-Busch to pull the ad. In a letter to FTC enforcement official Janet Evans, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) say the ad irresponsibly makes light of alcoholic behavior.

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Ad Alert: Bud Light undermines workplace prevention

Health benefits of drinking greatly exaggerated
The Buffalo News, NY, April l 9, 2005
It was in Chicago in 1997 when the alarm first sounded. At an alcohol policy conference, delegates from around the world were warned: Over the next five years, the most formidable challenge faced by those of us who work to prevent and treat alcohol problems would be a concerted campaign to stress the health benefits of moderate drinking.

Now it's eight years and counting. With enviable predictability, the reports, studies and press releases keep appearing, one after another, as if off an assembly line. And the newspapers, morning shows and news magazines pick them up for a public eager to believe that indulgence can actually be good for them.
But when it comes to investigating these exuberant claims about alcohol, the media have been oddly uninquisitive. What happened to the old question: Who benefits? I suggest the chief beneficiary is the alcohol industry. And, of course, Big Alcohol commands big money as well as unmatched expertise in how, and where, to
deploy it.

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Health Effects of Alcohol

Alcohol advertising during college games a burning issue
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA, April 04, 2005
The equation is as common as it is embarrassing -- a big college game coupled with $1 beer specials at sports bars ignites a celebration that spills into the streets for the overturning of cars and the torching of couches.. . .On April 28, the board of directors for the NCAA's Division I schools will review all alcohol policies -- from beer ads for televised events to direct sponsorships to the sales of beer in stadiums and arenas at the local, conference and national levels. . . .Ads for beer are receiving a lot of attention, particularly with the climax of the NCAA basketball tournament tonight. According to the Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV, the makers of alcoholic beverages spend $58 million annually on commercials during college sports programs. Of that, $28 million is spent on ads during the NCAA basketball tournament...

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Alcohol and Sports - An Unhealthy Mix

Partnership for a Safe and Healthy Pacifica making strides
Pacifica Tribune, CA, April 06, 2005
The Partnership for a Safe and Healthy Pacifica, as the new task force that addresses itself against youth drinking is called, met before school spring break to make progress on key issues of importance.

The "social norms group, which is trying to change the way the community feels about drinking, is investigating how easy it is for teens to buy alcohol and at what stores. It will launch an education program for retailers and tell them what the risks are if they sell to underage youth.

Discussions abounded among task force participants about the Foster's Beer commercial covered in the Pacifica Tribune. Amy Benjamin from Youth Leadership Institute was the first to react. As a member of the task force's "community norms group, she is involved with trying to change the way the community promotes alcohol. She presented information about how susceptible youth are to promotional measures taken by large beer companies who...

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Alcohol Advertising Abounds in Magazines Read by Youth from 2001 to 2003; Spirits, Beer and 'Alcopop' Ads Continued to Overexpose Underage Youth Through 2003
US Newswire, April, 7, 2005
America's teenagers saw significantly more beer and distilled spirits advertising in magazines between 2001 and 2003 than legal-age adults, as measured on a per capita basis, according to a study released today by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at Georgetown University.

CAMY's study analyzed 10,455 magazine alcohol ads costing almost $1 billion between 2001 and 2003, and found that 56 percent of the ad spending was placed in magazines with a disproportionate readership of underage youth, ages 12 to 20.
The Beer Institute and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) revamped their marketing codes in October 2003 and called on their members not to place ads where the underage audience is 30 percent or greater. CAMY's study found some progress toward the 30 percent threshold in 2003.

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Alcohol Ads Aplenty in Teen-Read Magazines
Alcohol Advertising and Youth

Volunteers press their case for a sober Cinco de Mayo
San Diego Union-Tribune Metro, CA, April 2, 2005
In San Diego, a local organization expanded its efforts to reclaim the holiday yesterday by taking to the streets of Old Town. Volunteers and organizers from the Cinco de Mayo con Orgullo Coalition - orgullo is Spanish for pride - went from bar to bar on San Diego Avenue at lunchtime asking owners and managers to tone down alcohol-related advertising ... billboards you see in the community? No," Juarez said, referring to the Mexican defeat of the French. "To the alcohol industry we have said and will continue to say, 'Our culture is not for sale.' " ...

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Latinos Say "Hands Off Our Holiday"
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