Terms of Agreement               1-5-05

 I watched a show recently on the problems of  teen binge drinking and the wisdom of the 21 drinking age in the U.S.  This was a public TV production  shown on WMHT and probably other PBS stations.
The panelists represented national viewpoints on these subjects, presumably as “experts”.  Former Middlebury College president John McCardell  gave the usual alcohol industry plea against the 21 drinking age. i.e. Soldiers can fight, vote, serve on juries, drive but can’t have a drink.  (McArdel seemed to be an unofficial rep for the alcohol industry.) The MADD President says 21 saved lives.

 The host (Frank Sesno, CNN reporter) tried timorously to introduce the worrisome subject of alcohol advertising aimed at youth.  Immediately the representative from DISCUS, the distilled spirits group, Peter Cressey, makes a flat statement that “…there is no statistical evidence, no studies that alcohol advertising increases consumption.”

 Jeff Becker rep for the Beer Institute states that no one in his industry wants minors to drink, just wants to encourage responsible drinking.  He doesn’t say what responsible drinking is. He also doesn’t say that the teen binge drinker is more likely to become a problem drinker, the person who will become the big, dependable client for Anheuser Busch down the road.

  No one challenged Becker’s familiar rhetoric. He  apparently agreed with Cressey. Should not he, or any of the other panelists, have known about the NIAAA (Nat’l. Institute on Alcohol & Alcohol Abuse) three year study of 75 key cities’ consumption rates before and after alcohol ads (billboards, print) entered the area,  seven years ago? Henry Saffer, research associate  at the National Bureau of Economic Research used a $300,000 grant from the NIAAA to find out if curtailing alcohol ads lowered  DWI fatalities. His
findings were published in 1996 in Alcohol Health & Research World.

   He recommended that alcohol ads should not be deductible as a business expense. An annual raise of about $3000M in new tax revenue would result.

 More importantly, the projected cut of about 15% in alcohol ads would reduce traffic fatalities by over 1300 per year.

 Another “expert” panelist chimed in with the erroneous statement that teen binge drinking and drugging had declined overall.  The General Household Survey report in April, 2003 stated that  binge drinking had increased 57% since 1997.

 Everyone on the panel solemnly opined that the solution to underage drinking and alcohol abuse should and could be handled by education.  “Let the public know the facts” was agreed upon as the best deterrence strategy.

  Did this panel give the facts to the viewing public?  That alcohol has a lethal dose when binged?  That 4000, mainly young people, die from AOD (alcohol overdose) annually and 1400 students  on college campuses die directly or in unexpected accidents (drowning, falling, driving) due to  extremely high blood alcohol levels?

 Dr. Dean Sienko, Lansing, Michigan medical director, called excessive drinking the greatest health threat facing the school’s (MSU) 44,000 students. 

 One person, not on the panel, but interviewed separately,  gave the viewer her own experience. Kathy Bath, editor of ”Campus Watch” newsletter  said she lost her only son, Raheem, who died of aspirating his own vomitus after heavy drinking. He was an upper-classman at Duke University.

  “I didn’t know anything about alcohol poisoning then,” she said, adding that now she understands that alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the U.S.  She spoke the unvarnished truth. She was not given time on the program to spell out solutions for under aged abusive drinking that were recommended in 2003 by the Nat’l. Acad.of Sciences to the Congress.  Nothing happened. Evidently tacit terms of agreement on this program were to exclude anyone on the “expert” panel who would disagree with each other; experts who would have disagreed, who would have presented facts which would have refuted the panel “experts” were excluded.  Some who could have presented other viewpoints and facts are: Dr. Wechsler, Harvard School of Public Health, CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest), the Marin Institute, Dr. Everett C. Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General, RID (Remove Intoxicated Drivers), all national experts and activists in the battle for underage drinking deterrence via  public education on radio & TV. RID agrees that the public, if informed of the facts, would be much more likely to refrain from binge drinking & underage drinking. Unfortunately, this PBS program did not acknowledge the facts. The panelists were awfully nice to each other, though.

 Doris Aiken, President