Alcohol News: November 2005
Editorial: Liquor stores as targets
San Francisco Chronicle, CA, November 30, 2005
A sound case can be made for tougher regulation of the numbers and selling practices of liquor stores in urban neighborhoods. Badly run establishments and an excess of these outlets, especially in low-income areas where residents lack competitively priced groceries, are rightly regarded as a blight on their communities. San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell accordingly has introduced legislation to clean up and discourage illegal activity around the city's 900 liquor stores, including those near her Bayview home. Oakland already is enforcing a similar law on its 350-plus liquor stores, and Seattle is regularly cited as a model for such efforts.
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CBS 5 Investigates: The Impact of Liquor Stores
More on community organizing
Lowering the drinking age increases car crashes among youth, study finds; injuries, deaths on the rise after New Zealand law change
Ascribe Newswire, November 28, 2005
Lowering the drinking age causes a dramatic increase in alcohol-related car crashes among young people, according to a new study based on data from New Zealand, where the government dropped the drinking age to 18 six years ago. This evidence is significant for the United States, because drinking and driving patterns among young people are similar. There is continuing pressure in the United States, particularly from alcohol industry interests, to reduce the minimum legal drinking age. Currently, five states have pending legislation to lower their drinking age. There is no traffic safety policy with more evidence for its effectiveness than minimum legal drinking age laws, said Robert B. Voas, Ph.D., an author of the study. Voas, a senior research scientist at PIRE Public Services Research Institute, has studied alcohol-related traffic issues for more than three decades.
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Health Care Costs of Alcohol
Ex-frat house seeks to become beacon against alcohol abuse
Boston Globe, MA, November 25, 2005
A former fraternity house where a 19-year-old sophomore died of acute alcohol poisoning 14 months ago has become home to an unusual college ministry that works to prevent alcohol abuse. . . .While college ministries might be expected to preach against alcohol, officials with local, state, and national church organizations representing a variety of denominations are unaware of any other college ministry with such an overriding focus on drinking. And safety, not prohibition, is one of Lighthouse's main goals, said Reza Zadeh, Timberline's 28-year-old pastor who founded Lighthouse . . .''We're not trying to kill someone's college experience," Zadeh said. ''We just don't want them to get killed while in college."
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More on Campus Organizing
Program may reduce drinking
Harvard Crimson, MA, November 22, 2005
Harvard researchers published a study last week concluding that cooperation between colleges and communities reduces binge drinking and drunk driving. . . .Many schools, including Harvard, currently use a social-norms approach, which attempts to reduce binge drinking by changing students’ perceptions of their peers’ drinking habits. This approach is based on the idea that students tend to think their peers drink more, and more often, than they actually do. But Henry Wechsler, principal investigator for the AMOD study and an HSPH lecturer, said that his long-running College Alcohol Study, which spawned AMOD, has not found any evidence that such programs are effective by themselves. Instead, Wechsler’s study showed that a combination of policies that limit access to and consumption of alcohol better curb binge drinking and drunk driving on campuses.
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Order Now! "Solutions to Community Alcohol Problems"
Beer, boorishness in stands spoil games for some fans
Washington Post, DC, November 21, 2005
Up in one of the nosebleed sections at FedEx Field yesterday, a man watched the game wearing a sweat shirt reading: "[Expletive] the Refs." With him was a little boy, maybe 5. . . . It has become so bad that some (fans) are turning to television as a safer, less harrowing way to watch the game. Many disgruntled fans blame what Laurie Lieber of the California-based Marin Institute calls "an alcohol-saturated society" that seems synonymous with big-time sports these days. "People have come to expect and accept the blanketing of alcohol promotion around sports," said Lieber, whose nonprofit public advocacy group considers alcohol abuse a public-health issue. She cited the increased signage at NFL stadiums, the ubiquitous TV commercials for beer and the bars and restaurants built into stadiums. Lieber also noted the increase in tailgating.
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Fans Fight Back
Alcohol makers on tricky path in marketing to college crowd
USA Today, November 16, 2005
Every marketer has its sweet spot. That's the age group where brand preferences begin forming for their product. For fast-food giants, it's the Happy Meal set. For soft-drink makers, it's preteens. For beer kingpins - and, increasingly, wine and liquor producers - it's the college crowd. . . ."How can young people make the right choices in an environment that's polluted?" asks Mark Pertschuk, executive director of the Marin Institute, an alcoholic-beverage-industry watchdog group.
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The Truth Behind Party Schools
Liquor stores squeezed
San Francisco Chronicle, CA, November 16, 2005
It was just another day outside Tenderloin Liquor on one of the seedier blocks of San Francisco's Turk Street. A man was passed out, spread- eagle, on the sidewalk. Drunks loitering outside the liquor store were hassling passers-by. And inside, Said Ali, who was manning the counter, knew that sooner or later he'd have to go back out and get in people's faces to keep his doorway clear. . . . In a bid to curb public drunkenness, drug dealing and gang activities, Maxwell introduced legislation Tuesday that would require liquor stores to reclaim their turf from unsavory elements or face penalties for failing to do so.
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Alcohol Policy Solutions: Land Use Policies
Beer sponsorships make NCAA uneasy during postseason
USA Today, November 17, 2005
No one is willing to say, or even guess precisely, how much value the NCAA adds to its $6.2-billion basketball television contract with CBS by allowing the network to sell and air beer and other malt-beverage ads. . . . The alcohol industry's spending on college sports-related TV advertising that year: $52.2 million, accounting for about 4.5% of all television advertising tied to those sports. That figure climbed to $66.2 million in 2004. What individual schools do during the regular season is up to them. In part because some schools play in city-owned facilities and thus can't dictate policy, and in part because bans on local sales and advertising could constitute illegal restraint of trade, the NCAA hasn't imposed across-the-board restrictions.
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Basketball Without Beer Ads?
Preventing Alcohol Problems on College Campuses
Busch citation draws attention to Nascar liquor sponsorships
New York Times, NY, November 15, 2005
A longstanding ban on hard liquor advertising was lifted by Nascar late last year, opening a valuable money stream for a sport that runs on sponsorship dollars. Already, the Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam and Crown Royal brands have found a home in the Nextel Cup garage this year.. . .Nascar has faced the issue of drinking and driving before, more recently with the arrest of Scott Wimmer before last year's Daytona 500. Wimmer, then a rookie, was placed on probation but not suspended. The introduction of liquor sponsors this year has renewed focus on the issue. Critics of the sponsorships include the American Medical Association and the racing icon Richard Petty. The last thing liquor sponsors could have wanted was a drinking-and-driving controversy - not after all of the years it took to be welcomed into a sport that traces its history to moonshiners.
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Breweries move to clean up their acts: trade group's panel to address complaints of indecent ads
Rocky Mountain News, CO, November 15, 2005
Consumers offended by scantily clad beer babes or predominant placement of beer in PG-13 flicks will have someone new to appeal to come Jan. 1. The Beer Institute, a trade and lobbying group whose membership includes Golden-based Coors Brewing Co., will appoint a panel to encourage compliance with advertising standards beginning Jan. 1. . . .Under the new program, the institute appoints a five-member panel, any three of whom would hear consumer complaints and then recommend what, if any, action the brewer should take, Becker said. The five panel members would be financially independent of both the institute and its membership, he said, and would address complaints only after the companies had been given a chance to fix the problem.
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Anheuser-Busch and Companies
Oakland contends with liquor billboards
Berkeley Daily Planet, CA, November 8, 2005
The enormous photo of the distinguished young African-American man-dressed for success, as the saying goes-has disappeared from the front of the hangar at the entrance to the Oakland International Airport, along with the inferences that his success was linked to the type of gin he drank. Its replacement billboard-featuring a bottle and glass of cognac-is scheduled to be gone in a few weeks too, when its contracted run ends, to be replaced by automobile ads. Joan Kiley, founder and director of the Berkeley-based Alcohol Policy Network of Alameda County, said that the problem with such high-profile billboards targeting young people in communities of color is the obvious.
Laurie Lieber, director of media advocacy for the Marin Institute, an industry watchdog, said getting rid of existing liquor and beer billboards is a challenge. “Even in situations where the city has the power to stop these billboards from coming in, the existing billboards are often grandfathered into the law, so you can’t put them out,” she said. “That’s why we counsel cities to be very careful about what types of advertising they allow on their streets. It’s difficult to go back, sometimes, and correct a problem even if cities believe they have made a mistake.”
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Latino groups protest offensive billboards
AMA Journalism Award exposes the truth about underage drinking
American Medical Association, November 9, 2005
More than 10 million people under the age of 21 consume alcohol making it their number one drug of choice. The alcohol industry portrays drinking as an activity that plays a key role in determining one's ability to be popular, have fun and excel at sports. The American Medical Association wants to reveal the truth about underage alcohol use by creating an award for aspiring journalists. The American Medical Association Shedding the Light on Alcohol journalism award was developed to expose the health and social consequences of underage drinking in America and to recognize excellence in journalistic writing. . . . The deadline is November 18, 2005.
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Alcohol and Youth Facts
Tribal elders oppose planned casino, liquor license
Billings Gazette, MT, November 13, 2005
Several elders on the Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation are opposing plans for a casino near Laredo that will serve alcohol. Tribal Council Chair John "Chance" Houle said their concerns may influence restrictions placed on the casino, but won't change the council's mind on the project because the Chippewa Cree Tribe needs the extra money. Members of the Rocky Boy cultural commission said the reservation was founded so American Indians could carry on traditional living, and that drinking alcohol and gambling run contrary to that. "According to the old-timers, these are not supposed to exist here, gambling and selling of liquor," commission member Duncan Standing Rock said. "We are being drawn away from the main parts of our lives as being able to practice our culture, our religion. It's slowly leaving us because of these distractions."
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Alcohol Policy Solutions: Land Use Policies
With fraternity parties all but a thing of the past, freshmen are resorting to a tried-and-true method of getting their booze on
Daily Orange, NY, November 9, 2005
As bass-heavy rap explodes from CD player speakers, four Syracuse University freshmen play drinking games in a cramped dorm room on the Mount. They are having a power hour, which requires them each to take a shot of beer every minute. . . .Students drink alcohol in dorms because they can't do it anywhere else. It's harder for guys to drink outside of dorms because of new fraternity party rules.With these rules, people can't just show up at a fraternity party; they must be on a university-approved guest list, Samantha said. "Drinking in college in dorms is a necessity to complete the college experience," Bob said.
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Preventing Alcohol Problems on College Campuses
State approves beer with elf on label
Boston Globe, MA, November 8, 2005
Connecticut residents will be able to toast to their health this holiday season with a bottle of Seriously Bad Elf. The state Department of Consumer Protection announced Tuesday it would approve the sale of Seriously Bad Elf ale in Connecticut despite earlier concerns that the beer's label might appeal to children. The department determined that although state regulations bar alcohol advertising with images that might entice kids, including images associated with Santa Claus, the regulations do not apply to beer labels. The hearing was canceled on Tuesday and a ruling was issued in favor of Shelton Brothers. "The constitutional issue did not come into play here," said Edwin Rodriguez, the state's consumer protection commissioner. "The courts have given the states total jurisdiction on how it regulates liquor within its borders. But our regulation specifically exempts labels."
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Anheuser wants better beer image
Billings Gazette, MT, November 13, 2005
Anheuser-Busch Cos. is lobbying its competitors to support a marketing campaign that highlights the benefits and social value of what they all produce: beer. Drawing inspiration from campaigns such as "Got Milk?" the nation's largest brewer hopes strengthening beer's image will help the industry beat back a growing appetite for distilled spirits and wine. Brewers, which have focused on competing against each other for so many years, need to remind consumers and retailers why beer is America's most popular alcoholic beverage, said Bob Lachky, executive vice president of global industry development at Anheuser-Busch's domestic brewing unit in St. Louis.
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Anheuser-Busch and Companies
Too much alcohol in stadiums?
MSNBC, November 6, 2005
A Dateline hidden camera investigation provides some troubling evidence that rules intended to limit dangerous drinking at stadiums across the country are not being enforced. If you have ever been to a major sporting event, inevitably you’ve seen them: the fans who have one beer too many. Sure they are loud, and sometimes obnoxious- but are they dangerous? One New Jersey family says “yes,” and claims a “culture of intoxication” at sporting events, encouraged by concession companies, is to blame. And after you hear their tragic story and look at what we captured with our hidden cameras, you may agree.
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See Inside Edition's investigation
More on Fans Fighting Back
Study sees behavioral tie to images of alcohol
Columbia Daily Tribune, MO, November 2, 2005
Next time there’s a fistfight at the local bar, don’t assume the participants have been drinking. They might just have been looking at beer ads, according to a recent study by a University of Missouri-Columbia faculty member. An MU assistant professor in psychology has found a relationship between alcohol-related imagery and the aggression that can occur when someone drinks too much. "Consuming alcohol is not necessary for this effect to occur," Bruce Bartholow said. "These kind of messages do have an effect on people."
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Alcohol Industry "Prevention" Materials: Public Service or PR ploy?
A not-too-scary Halloween: police call Castro event one of most peaceful lately
San Francisco Chronicle, CA, November 1, 2005
There were the typical -- angels, devils, Zorros, pirates and witches. . . Halloween in the predominantly gay Castro district Monday night was crowded, but more orderly and low-key compared to years past. Though thousands of people were in attendance, the festivities mellowed considerably, and a rough estimate put only about 15 percent of the attendees in costume. Police said it was one of the most peaceful Halloween gatherings in recent memory. Alcohol is now banned, and there were about 250 officers to prevent things from getting out of hand, as happened in 2002 when the wildness included four people being stabbed. Real cops, enforcing the alcohol restriction, far outnumbered costumed cops who wanted to ignore it. There were checkpoints scattered throughout the area, and police were searching purses and backpacks and then dumping any liquor.
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More on Halloween and alcohol
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