Robert Denniston Presenting at AP16

There’s a certain romance associated with being in the wine industry, which is why many people aspire to own a vineyard despite all the back-breaking work associated with farming. That’s why I was pretty shocked by the excessive disdain for the alcohol industry that many participants expressed at the Alcohol Policy 16 (AP16) Conference last week. Although the event is marketed as a public health forum, its participants seemed more interested in demonizing industry and not just the alcohol industry. “Junk food,” guns, and even cars took some hits.

According to one speaker, the “alcohol industry” could be likened to a mosquito carrying a dangerous virus, and we—the consumers are its victims. Well, that’s how former U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) employee Robert Denniston suggested that others “frame” alcohol issues when lobbying in favor of taxes and laws to restrict access.

During the last day of the event a the plenary session, Dennisten made the following suggestion:

A concept that is worthy of consideration about how to frame this issue is authored by Jaheil and Babor, who have proposed referring to the alcohol problem as the “industrial epidemic” because alcohol beverages are are industrial products. The difference between natural and industrial epidemics is that the former are caused by natural agents that are driven by natural forces acting upon those agents, such as plasmodium falciparum and anopheles mosquitoes in the case of malaria … by contrast industrial disease epidemics are driven at least in part by corporations and their allies who promote a dangerous product such as tobacco or cars or guns. This understanding shifts the policy focus from the agent, alcohol, to the host, the problem drinker, to the disease vector, the alcohol industry and associates.

What an astoundingly unbalanced view of industry!

While this was the most extreme thing I heard at this event, every session I attended included some insult to the alcohol business. Holley Shafer of Alcohol Justice explained during her talk that alcohol businesses are so untrustworthy that “we don’t think industry should really be part of the conversation” when it comes to formulating tax policy. So much for our representative system of government! Thomas Babor, author of the original article on so-called “industrial epidemics,” said that industry had no desire to promote public health because it advocates “individual responsibility” rather than taxes and regulations. Most of his presentation during the final plenary session mocked industry efforts to advance individual responsibility. And as Julie Gunlock of the Independent Women’s Forum pointed out in her post on this event, one participant described alcohol an “evil” product.

This conference proved to be an insult to anyone in the alcohol industry, from artisan winemakers, brewers, and distillers who put their heart and soul into their products; to the many employees and executives working in mid-sized businesses; to those involved in making, selling, and marketing major alcohol brands. They all work hard to provide something that consumers want and enjoy, most of whom do not abuse these products.

This event apparently is not designed to focus on public health, but on how to effectively take away consumer freedom and punish alcohol-related businesses—small and large. Yet it is funded at least in part by our tax dollars and has the backing of divisions within the NIH: U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Is this really what Congress wanted when it funded these organizations? If Congress wants to fund useful and scholarly research on the public health implications of alcohol abuse, this certainly isn’t the right project.

I’ve written some on alcohol policy in the past (here and here) and as the director of IWF’s Women for Food Freedom project, I’m always interested in figuring out where food and beverage regulations are headed next.

It was in this spirit that I attended a three-day conference last week in Washington, DC called Alcohol Policy 16 which was billed as a conference “on the avoidance of alcohol-related problems using public policy strategies.”

Yet, it didn’t take me long to realize that this conference really wasn’t about avoiding alcohol-related problems. Rather, it was about using the hammer of the state to make Americans avoid alcohol altogether. In fact, the conference program sets the tone with a rather dramatic quote by late anti-alcohol activist Griffith Edwards who said “alcohol is in itself Evil” and “society must rid itself of alcohol.” So much for the pre-dinner cocktail hour standard at these types of Washington conferences. Bummer.

Read her full piece at IWF’s Inkwell Blog.

I thought we’d hear about research related to the impact of taxes on alcohol abuse. For example:  Do higher taxes really reduce alcohol abuse or do they simply punish all alcohol consumers? The answer to that question appeared not to matter. The entire discussion revolved around how to lobby for taxes and profit in the process.

Rebecca Ramirez of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University presented her qualitative research on the framing of pro-tax messaging for use in lobbying campaigns. It included interviews with policymakers and activists involved in these campaigns.  Ramirez’s discussion eventually turned to earmarking, which is apparently the key reason many groups are involved.  Officials with one disability advocacy group, she noted, told her flat out they simply didn’t care about the public health impacts of taxes.  They were in the game solely to get some of the tax revenue steered toward their organization.

But what happens when too many groups want a piece of the pie?  There simply isn’t enough to go around.  Accordingly, Ramirez suggested groups might want to keep their coalitions just large enough to win, so each could get a bigger piece.

How does this serve public health?  It doesn’t, according to Bruce Lee Livingston of Alcohol Justice. He commented during the question and answer portion that activists are unable to get taxes high enough to actually produce positive public health benefits. Rather, he called for a “charge-for-harm” approach, which is based on the assumption that anyone who drinks deserves to be punished.

So there you have it.  “Public health advocates’ have two main reasons for taxing alcohol:  profit and punishment.  Somehow that simply doesn’t seem fair.

A collaboration of numerous health-related groups, the theme of this partially taxpayer-funded event was “Building Blocks for Sound Alcohol Policy.” Surely, there is a role for public health advocacy when it comes to addressing issues related to serious alcohol abuse. But rather than focus on real problems, there was way too much focus on how to control the behavior of people like me.

My crime stems from the fact that I like to share a bottle of wine with my husband at dinner. My consumption of 2.5 standard-drinks-a-day exceeds the two-drinks a day maximum for women — placing me in the “excessive” drinker category.

Mind you, a standard drink really isn’t that much alcohol, especially when consumed with food over many hours. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a standard drink is one that contains 14 grams of alcohol — one small, 5-ounce glass of wine, a 12-ounce beer, or a 1.5 shot of spirits (40 percent alcohol). Many people can handle several of such drinks over a 24 hour period without getting “drunk” or abusing these products.

Calling two glasses plus one sip of wine “excessive” may sound ridiculous to moderate drinkers, but that doesn’t seem to matter to many of the AP16 participants. In fact, one presenter placed the phrase “responsible drinker” in quotes, an approach with which no-one took issue. Apparently, to many of the participants, no level of drinking is responsible.

The solutions participants presented for such “excessive” drinkers emphasized the heavy hand of government. Presenters honed in on how to effectively lobby and advocate for alcohol regulations of any kind, including preventing alcohol at public events, taxing as much as politically possible, and limiting alcohol retail licenses.

Speakers largely dismissed the idea that health policy related to alcohol should focus on promoting individual responsibility, and one mocked industry efforts to do so. They forget, we are supposed to live in a free society — one that abolished alcohol prohibition, which proved a miserable failure. Ultimately, individuals need to be responsible. After all, a host of lifestyle choices affect our health — from diets to dental hygiene, to activity levels. No level of taxes and regulations will change that reality.

For anyone who legitimately wants to address real alcohol abuse and health issues, the AP16 Alcohol Policy Conference should be viewed as  a lost opportunity. If these groups want to be taken seriously, they should be looking at real problems and offering serious solutions, rather than trying to punish responsible drinkers.

More posts to come on this topic.

Now that the initiative has passed, the state can start issuing licenses to grocery stores and Costco to sell spirits beginning in June 2012. In addition, it allows Costco to buy direct from producers, centrally warehouse the liquor, and then distribute to its stores–passing savings on to consumers. It also allow retailers to sell to retailers.  Under Washington State Law, lawmakers cannot modify the initiative for two years, preventing the legislature from reversing it before implementation. Hopefully, within two years time, state lawmakers will be open to granting smaller retailers the right to sell spirits too.  The new law only grants that right to those who eventually buy existing government stores and retailers with 10,000 or more square feet of space.

Costco and supermarkets can sell alcohol in some states, but some states only allow private retailers to only sell beer or beer and wine. See Costco’s list here. Now Washington retailers can sell all three! Costco may take its battle to other states … perhaps starting with Oregon. Let’s hope they prevail in Oregon and beyond.

Image credit:  bigbirdz’s photostream.

Before Prohibition, saloons were often tied to alcohol producers either through contractual arrangements or direct ownership. Members of the Temperance movement believed that these economic arrangements contributed to social problems related to alcohol abuse, prostitution, and criminal activity. It is not clear that market structure was the source of such problems, which more likely have cultural roots. Nonetheless, concerns about such ties between suppliers and retailers were a key impetus for states adopting a mandatory three-tier system after Prohibition ended.

Minton argues that it’s time to get over the myth that tied-house rules promoted alcohol abuse. It offers no excuse for  public policies promoting anti-competitive, three-tier mandates. Check out her letter in the Detroit News on this topic and her blog post on open-market.org, which offers more details. She also has a lengthy piece published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy worth reading.

Quiz yourself here.

As we presented, participants had the pleasure of sampling more than a dozen wines and one beer from various states across the nation. I provided three featured wines and 10 others from wineries around America–thanks to a donation by Wine America. My colleague provided one beer. You can see the complete list here and my PowerPoint here.

I decided to feature a Colorado wine because I was amazed by one while dining at the Denver airport. With some online research, I discovered Gary Vaynerchuk‘s review of Guy Drew Vineyards Metlate, 2007. Fortunately, I was able to order this one via the mail. It was amazingly good as were the other two featured wines we sampled: Callaghan Padres, 2008 from Arizona (also a Vaynerchuk favorite), and Jefferson Vineyards Chardonnay from Virginia (my discovery during the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia).  The other ten were also very tasty and well received by the group. The presentation proved that many states are making exciting wines–despite many wacky state alcohol laws!

Wholesale Deception
By Angela Logomasini

Beer wholesalers contend that alcohol legislation they are pushing on Capitol Hill would safeguard state and local rights – but in reality, it is designed to simply serve the wholesalers’ special interests.

Wholesalers crafted the text of the Community Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act (H.R. 1161, aka, the CARE Act) to appear very similar to language in a 2005 Supreme Court case, Graholm v. Heald, which addressed direct shipping of wine from wineries to consumers and retailers. Wholesalers would like lawmakers to believe that means the bill upholds that legal precedent.

In reality, the CARE Act promises substantial change that could reverse market-based – and consumer-friendly – policy trends produced by Granholm. This case addressed laws in Michigan and New York that applied differential treatment to in-state and out-of-state wineries seeking to ship to state residents, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional …. Read more on the Washington Times website.

Since 2005, more than half of the states have faced challenges in federal courts that threaten their authority to regulate alcohol and their ability to maintain a licensed system of alcohol controls. In a time of fiscal crisis and skyrocketing state budget deficits, these lawsuits put private profits ahead of the public interest and force states to spend scarce resources. …Unelected judges in federal courts who are unfamiliar with the needs of local communities are interpreting the same laws differently and issuing conflicting rulings, which demonstrates judicial confusion about the true intent of Congress. The CARE Act of 2011 removes this ambiguity and makes Congress’ intent clear regarding the states’ intended lead in alcohol regulation.

It is clear that wholesalers would like to halt legal battles that are destined to decide the constitutionality of important policies affecting consumers, entrepreneurs, and—most of all—wholesalers’ competitors. Their suggestion that such cases should not go forward because judges are unelected, uninformed, or might issue conflicting decisions is absurd. That argument is akin to suggesting that Congress should preempt judicial cases related to other constitutional issues—freedom of speech, assembly, or religion—because judges are not elected or may be confused about those issues. American jurisprudence is built on this deliberative, judicial process which wholesalers lament. It is governed by appointed judges, who are supposed to stay above electoral politics and are charged with, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, “a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.”  Unlike legislators, special interests are not well positioned to influence this process with PAC money, lobbying, or political pressure.

The wholesalers’ claim that Congress must resolve judicial conflicts is equally absurd. The framers of the Constitution anticipated that conflicting opinions would be a necessary part of this process. Accordingly, they organized the federal courts into a hierarchy through which conflicts would gain resolution as issues rise to higher courts, eventually reaching the Supreme Court when necessary. Moreover, the CARE Act will not remove ambiguity associated with legal challenges to state laws as wholesalers contend. Instead, it will hand an advantage to wholesaler interests within the judicial process, with the ultimate goal of limiting the expansion of market competition and consumer choice.

This post is excerpted from:  A CARE-less Rush to Regulate Alcohol: wholesalers Attempt to Secure Regulatory Fiefdoms.

Photo Credit: Nathan Laurell’s photostream on flickr.