SPECIAL REPORT: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Neo-Prohibitionist Agenda
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/1868
Seventy years ago this week, beer became legal in the United States (at least beer with less than 3.2 percent alcohol content). According to the Denver Post, "it was 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt announced happily as he signed the bill authorizing repeal, 'I think this would be a good time for a beer.'" One pub in Boulder, Colorado marked the anniversary of "the end of tyranny" by serving 33-cent pints.
All that sounds jolly good, but the Philadelphia Daily News warns that "the anti-alcohol forces are out there," and wonders: "Are we facing a return to Prohibition?"
A new report from the Center for Consumer Freedom answers that question in the affirmative, and details how the new temperance movement has been conceived, coordinated, and funded by the $9 billion Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Follow the money, our report demonstrates, and you'll find that nearly every study disparaging adult beverages in the mass media, every legislative push to limit alcohol marketing or increase taxes, and every supposedly "grassroots" anti-alcohol organization leads back to Princeton, New Jersey, where RWJF is headquartered.
The most famous organization in the neo-prohibitionist cabal is Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The group's name has become a misnomer, as MADD no longer dedicates its energies to tackling the scourge of drunk driving. MADD now assails drinking of every kind. Its new slogan, "impairment begins with the first drink," is carefully crafted to position alcohol as a drug which there is no way to moderately or reasonably consume.
A television spot produced by MADD depicts heroin being boiled in a spoon and sucked into a syringe while the voice-over intones about the dangers of alcohol. The effect of such an advertisement -- as MADD well knows -- is to promote the image of alcohol as a destructive, addictive, and abnormal drug that American society should not abide. This report shows that MADD has received more than $3 million from the RWJF since 1996.
The RWJF's neo-prohibitionist agenda becomes as clear as day when it funds groups that link alcohol to illicit drugs like heroin. Shortly after one anti-alcohol organization produced an advertisement depicting a bottle of beer as if it were a syringe, the RWJF made one of its directors a "Developing Leadership in Reducing Substance Abuse" fellow, which carries a $75,000 cash award. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), meanwhile, is pushing for alcohol's inclusion in the federal government's anti-drug media campaign. "Don't forget beer, the king of drugs," the group says. RWJF gave CSPI $750,000 for its anti-alcohol project in 2001 alone.
RWJF hardly limits itself to linking alcohol with illegal drugs. Many of the neo-prohibitionist activist organizations and leaders that the Center for Consumer Freedom has reported on -- and debunked -- over the years are funded by RWJF. That includes:
The Rand Corporation, whose studies in support of roadblocks and limiting access to alcohol are funded by RWJF.
Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), whose many flawed studies we've merrily refuted. CASA has received more than $35 million from RWJF since 1991.
The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY), which exists for one purpose: to accuse the alcohol industry of "targeting" underage drinkers. RWJF established CAMY with a $5 million grant.
The Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention (HEC), which argues for "changing people's knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions regarding alcohol use." It also supports "reducing alcohol availability" and "reducing alcohol promotion and marketing." HEC--an agency of the federal government--receives "supplemental funding" from RWJF.
Ralph Hingson, MADD's Vice President of Public Policy, published a deeply flawed report claiming that alcohol causes 1,400 deaths among college students each year. Hingson received a $300,000 fellowship from RWJF.
Jim Gogek, an editorial writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune, who wrote an op-ed in The New York Times accusing the Governors of Maryland, New York and New Jersey of being bought and paid for by the alcohol industry because they oppose even higher "sin" taxes. Gogek is paid $25,000 a year by RWJF.
Richard Yoast, who wrote a report called "The Alcohol Industry: Partner or Foe?" that argues there are two kinds of people: those who abuse alcohol, and those who abstain. The former shouldn't have access to it, the argument goes, and the latter won't care if you take it away. Yoast heads the American Medical Association's Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse. RWJF has given nearly $6 million to Yoast's office since 1995.
Combine Yoast's abstainer-or-abuser conviction with the surmise that relatively convenient and inexpensive alcohol leads inexorably to its abuse, and you have yourself a theory that justifies prohibition. Combine Yoast's work with that of the Rand Corporation, Jim Gogek, CASA, the Education Department, CAMY, MADD, Hingson, and hundreds of others who gather at RWJF-funded conferences to plan their next moves, and you have a massive, neo-prohibitionist movement.
RWJF's family of anti-alcohol warriors can't advocate prohibition directly, so it seeks instead to make alcohol prohibitively expensive through higher "sin" taxes, or prohibitively hard to come by through restrictions on where and when one may drink. The RWJF funded campaigns to ban alcohol from airports, parks, cultural events, sports stadiums, and even golf courses. It funds efforts to restrict the hours bars, restaurants, and liquor stores can stay open. And it has never met an alcohol tax it didn't like. Taken together, these efforts have been called prohibition "drip by drip."
RWJF doesn't aim directly for Prohibition with a capital "P." Instead, it seeks to drive adult beverage consumption underground, away from mainstream culture and public places. Restraining the availability of alcohol -- and linking it to illegal drugs -- will marginalize drinking to such an extent that Prohibition will have been achieved by stealth.
RWJF has put in place all the elements required for such sweeping change. From 1998 to 2002 it spent more than $265 million cultivating a vast network of anti-alcohol community organizations, centers for technical support, a compliant press, and a growing body of academic literature critical of even moderate alcohol consumption. The next highly publicized study or angry local movement may now reach the "tipping point" where the RWJF-funded anti-alcohol agenda snowballs into the kind of orchestrated frenzy that culminated in the 18th Amendment.
Drinking arrests rile bar patrons
Effort goes too far, say 2 who were jailed in intoxication crackdown
All Burton Byers wanted was a burger and a beer – or six – at his Irving hotel.
In return, he traded his seat at the bar for a spot in jail – and unemployment.
Mr. Byers and others are still fuming two weeks after being accused of public intoxication by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, part of stepped-up enforcement efforts statewide in establishments that serve liquor. The campaign, which also involves local police, brought agents to Irving on the weekend of March 10-12.
"I could not believe [it]," Mr. Byers said, recounting that nobody in the bar was fighting or causing problems. "I've been in a lot of states, and you go in a bar to do one thing, and that's to drink alcohol."
Commission officials are defending the actions, noting that being drunk in public is against the law and that any place licensed to serve booze is, by law, a public place – including restaurants in dry areas that sell so-called private memberships to let patrons drink.
The agency's focus, a spokeswoman said, is to rein in people whose alcohol use could make them a danger to themselves or others – especially by driving drunk.
In the six months ending in February, the agency issued 2,281 criminal citations, nearly double the amount of the same period the previous year.
Some drinkers, though, say the state is going too far in targeting bar patrons who may have no intention of driving anywhere – Mr. Byers, for instance, said he was merely going to retire to his room in the same hotel. And some fear that having officers quietly monitor drinkers and make judgment calls about whether they pose a threat could lead to Big Brother-type abuses.
Mr. Byers, 41, said he was relaxing at the Circle Spur Saloon at the Clarion Hotel where he was staying, near the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, when officers approached him. Apparently, undercover alcohol commission agents had identified him as drunk, either by his behavior or by the number of beers he said he had consumed – key indicators of intoxication, according to the agency. Mr. Byers said he had no more than six beers.
Mr. Byers, a resident of Rogers, Ark., who is the director of maintenance for an aircraft charter company, was taken outside, handcuffed and sent to the Irving jail, where he posted $360 bond and was released. He had traveled to Dallas to help repair a plane and lost his job afterward, in part because of the arrest, he said.
Happy, or drunk?
A Clarion official declined to comment, but a bartender at another location targeted that night said he and his managers share customers' concerns.
"They feel like it's violating their rights. How can you give somebody a public intox? That's what you go to a bar for," said Todd Williams, 27, a supervisor at Boston's Restaurant and Sports Bar on Market Place Boulevard in Irving.
Agents might easily mistake the rowdy atmosphere of a sports bar for drunkenness, Mr. Williams said.
"People are just laughing and having a good time," he said, describing the case of an off-duty restaurant employee who was arrested. "He's just kind of a loud and friendly guy. They might have taken him for being drunk."
Carolyn Beck, the alcohol commission's public information officer, said that officers take steps to confirm drunkenness, such as moving the patrons to a quiet location to observe them.
The legal requirements are different for proving public intoxication than for proving a person is driving under the influence, she said. The standard is not whether a person has a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent; it's whether the person poses a threat to themselves or others.
Officers' observations
So no blood alcohol or breathalyzer tests are required, and convictions – usually class C misdemeanors, with fines but no jail time– often depend on officers' observation of certain symptoms: slurred speech, staggering or loss of balance, bloodshot eyes.
And as with drunken driving, Ms. Beck said, police don't have to wait for a person to harm somebody or themselves to make an arrest.
"Lots of people drive under the influence every day and get home without hurting anybody," she said. "It's the likelihood that you'll hurt somebody if you're driving drunk: that's why they made it illegal."
Mike Lessard, 45, was arrested at Texas Bar & Grill on Las Colinas Boulevard and also spent the night in jail.
He said he was having a pleasant evening, downing a few beers after work, when a plainclothes officer summoned him outside to be arrested.
"I had no idea that some guy could just tap me on the shoulder and say they'd like to see us outside," the Irving resident said. "I was thrown by the whole thing. I didn't know they had any right to do that."
Mr. Lessard said he wasn't sure how much he had been drinking but said he wasn't noticeably impaired and felt in control. He said that if had been drinking too much, he would have found a ride home.
In a memo sent to the city officials this week, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said that he had fielded "a number of unverified complaints regarding the reasonableness of some arrests made during this operation."
"In general, I believe it serves the best interest of our citizens to ensure that the premises licensed to sell alcohol in Irving are conducting themselves within the parameters of the law," he wrote to Assistant City Manager Gilbert Perales. He called Irving police's participation "consistent with this objective."
Still, Chief Boyd said, he planned to meet with alcoholic beverage commission officials to discuss concerns about the operation.
In 2003, a similar effort in Virginia was halted after an outcry from officials and the public. Ms. Beck, the Texas commission spokeswoman, said that the department is confident that the arrests are legitimate and that lawmakers approve of the program.
"We've had a lot of contact over at the Legislature, and they gave us additional personnel for this effort," she said.
Pete Slover reported from Austin; Eric Aasen reported from Irving.
E-mail pslover@dallasnews.com and eaasen@dallasnews.com
LOUD AND SLURRING
State alcoholic beverage control agents have been on the lookout in bars for intoxicated patrons:
The usual suspects: Drinkers with loud or slurred speech, exaggerated movements or unsteady balance, considered to be the most common symptoms exhibited by intoxicated people.
Final check: Anyone exhibiting the symptoms listed above or seen drinking heavily may be approached and asked to take a field sobriety test similar to one for drunken drivers. A suspect may also be asked to take a breath test, although neither it nor a blood test is required.
Busted: If the agent determines that a person does not have the normal use of mental or physical faculties, the person can be arrested and charged with public drunkenness, usually a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500. The person could spend several hours in jail. Officers can also charge bars or waiters with selling alcohol to an intoxicated person – a misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $500 and up to a year in jail.
SOURCE: Texas Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Oh, Bother!" Said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.
Unheard of. I had thought that bars were for SMOKING.
Now the revenoor man wanted Granddaddy bad
So he headed up the holler with everything he had
Before my time but I been told
He never came back from Copperhead road
- Copperhead Road, by Steve Earle, from the album of the same name released in 1988 and adopted by the State of Tennessee as their national anthem in 1989.
Dark, me, & many other posters predicted this was the obvious next step when we were telling people to not vote a smoking ban in - because it will open the floodgates to more bans, govt. interference of lives, etc. I don't give a rat's ass if you don't like the smell of smoke; or that you may not be 'happy' having to sit in a restaurant that has a smoking section. Those who voted the smoking ban are the cause of this big brother behaviour -not just here in Ohio, but anywhere in the world. They ban smoking FIRST - because it is the easiest thing to get banned. We TOLD you that. We TOLD you passing a smoking ban would not be worth the freedoms you're giving up in the process. So I guess now it won't just be the smokers who are 'put out' - it will be anybody who enjoys a beer in a bar, or people who want to eat whatever the hell they want to eat; overweight people will be the next 'second class citizens'. (Did you not read the Blade article I posted about how they think they need to 'change the environment'? ) Overweight people will be subjected to weight limits for employment & insurance. Restaurants will restrict portion size (go ahead & try to order that 11 oz. Outback Special when this happens.)
That Outback Special will be priced out of existence.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Oh, Bother!" Said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.