Posted on 01/29/2005 10:37:39 PM PST by 82Marine89
This time next week, viewers across America will tune in for the big show: Not just the Super Bowl, but the ads, including a heady brew of beer commercials. The ever-busy plaintiff's bar is also ready... to serve up another round of lawsuits.
On the surface, these lawsuits target alleged pitches by the alcohol industry to underage drinkers. As usual, though, what's really on trial are personal responsibility and the deep pockets of beverage makers.
Class-action lawsuits filed in California and a few other states accuse alcohol companies of using provocative TV and magazine ads to push libations on youngsters. The lawsuits want to make beverage makers censor (or cease) alcohol ads ... oh, and they seek monetary damages for the parents of young drinkers.
Prodded to illegally consume alcohol, the lawsuits claim, youthful drinkers are more likely to develop alcohol-related problems as adults.
Budweiser Frogs may be history, but even if the Coors Twins make beer appealing to teens, so what? Adults are ultimately accountable for underage consumption, because any kid who scores some booze has to find an adult to provide it -- even if it's a high-schooler raiding dad's liquor cabinet.
There's no evidence alcohol makers are targeting youth-oriented media. And pursuing payoffs for the purported victims sends a perverse message to parents: Underage drinking is profitable. Let your kids get loaded; a jackpot awaits.
A 2002 study of industry ads by the Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth railed against promotions in "youth-oriented" magazines. Problem is, none of the targeted publications actually drew a large teen audience. We're talking Sports Illustrated, not Boy's Life.
Meantime, studies by governments and health groups claim that youthful drinkers account for roughly 11 percent of alcohol consumption. But is the typical underage drinker 12 years old, or 20?
Litigation won't stop underage drinking, though it could make lawyers rich. If parents want to prevent their kids from drinking, suing Jim Beam isn't the answer. Taking responsibility for raising your children is.
If you drink responsibly, thank your lucky stars. Some who went before you weren't so lucky. You can visit them at some of our finer and not so finer burial facilities across the country, but I doubt you'd have enough time in the rest of your life to visit them all - especially if some drunk driver were to swerve across a median and smash into you during your travels.
The beer companies have no guilt. Occasionally they're shamed by groups like MADD into running public-service spots that encourage designated drivers. That's about it. The beer companies don't seem to care about any of the other problems that can be traced back to alcohol. They care about the greenbacks, and that's about it.
Thank God there's no Sen. Coors in Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators should care about their constituents' lives, not leave them hanging out to dry for profit.
Bad analogy. I've never seen a dynamite manufacturer put ads on TV that target a young demographic and ignore all or most of the dangers of the explosive product. And I believe when a person actually purchases dynamite, there are caution labels everywhere warning them of the extreme dangers. Plus, I think you actually need some sort of special permit or license to purchase explosives. (At least I would hope so.)
2)The idea that "beer barons" are cynically foisting off a dangerous product on a vulnerable public while they count their money in their mansions giving not a care to the harm they cause is an opinion not founded on any objective look at the industry (as compared to any other business) but rather on an elitist attitude that the average person is not competent enough to make healthy decisions for themselves and is easy prey to any salesman selling $#*! on a stick that comes along.
One of the reasons beer companies go after young drinkers in their ads is that they're not as smart or mature as others. And if they succeed in getting an underage or young drinker hooked, they have a good chance of having that person's business for decades until death. Even if the poor dude dies of liver disease, he's probably going to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on that company's beer before it kills him. And it's not just true with immature young consumers. There are also a lot of clueless Homer J. Simpsons out there in real life who will buy $#*! on a stick, as you put it.
The fact is; all life is a risk and all people are best off when they are allowed the freedom to make decisions based on their own assessment of the costs versus benefits of their choices.
If that's the case, I guess you're saying that all drugs should be legalized. And, judging by your defense of the beer companies, I guess you'd have no problem with a cocaine manufacturer putting an ad on during the Super Bowl that glorifies the use of their product to kids and young adults with little or no mention of the dangers.
In fact, it sounds like you'd even support the idea that attempting suicide should be legal. And if a population-control group wanted to put ads on TV targeted to young people, urging suicide in the name of controlling global population, that would be OK, too. After all, those people should, as you contend, be "allowed the freedom to make decisions based on their own assessment of the costs versus benefits of their choices."
For most people, the numerous benefits of the consumption of alcohol are much greater than the risks. For a few people, they are not.
LOL! A few people? I've never heard so many millions of alive and dead Americans described as "a few people" before! Maybe you're only personally aware of a "few people" in your own life who have had problems with alcohol. However, alcoholism is a daily problem in cities and families across this country. As for any "numerous benefits" of consuming an occasional alcoholic beverage, (A) I can honestly say I don't know of any, and (B) I don't see how any such benefits would even come close to erasing the cost to society of seeing so many lives destroyed.
3)Luck has nothing to do with drinking responsibly, anymore than it has anything to do with alcoholism. It is a choice that everyone makes when they drink.
I suppose if a person never tries alcohol, they'll never know whether they would allow themselves to become addicted to the stuff or whether they'd be able to be a "social drinker." Alcohol is clearly addictive to a large percentage of people, many of whom didn't want to become drunks when they started drinking. That's kind of what the lawsuit in the posted article is all about. I can guarantee you the beer companies definitely want as many young people as possible to try their product, so they'll get hooked. They sell an addictive and dangerous product, and they should acknowledge the dangers in every single advertisement they put on the air. That's what we see with numerous medications when they warn consumers of all sorts of possible side effects. They list them off during every commercial, partially because it's the right thing to do and partially because they don't want to be liable in a court of law. Maybe the alcohol companies are afraid to do the same thing because the list of their product's downsides would be too long, causing their commercials to go from 30 seconds each to 5 minutes each.
Believe it or not, in some ways, I can understand your side of this debate. As I said earlier in this thread, I'm not sure whether this legal case has any merit in a free country. However, that's a separate issue from my own personal opinion that the beer companies and most of the people who run them are extremely negligent at best and downright evil at worst.
Maybe it's from personal experience. Luckily, I can't stand the taste of beer and don't feel I need to artificially adjust my brain by getting a buzz that may come with 1 or 2 beers, much less 9 or 10 beers. However, I've seen others in my life who weren't so lucky.
I was dating a beautiful Mariah Carey lookalike when I was younger. I was on Cloud 9 until she took me to one of her favorite activities, which was to meet friends in a garage, drink lots of beer, then go puke and/or piss in the corner, so they could drink even more beer. I tried to talk to her when she was sober. She looked at me like I was John Ashcroft raiding a neighborhood game of poker.
I know what it's like to be called to an acquaintance's house because a diabetic got drunk again, started kicking his wife and needs to be escorted out of his own house in his underwear, so he can sleep it off at someone else's residence. (Lucky them!)
I know what it's like to hear the first beer can of the day being opened at 4:48 a.m. by a family member. Then the last one being opened at 9:30 p.m.
I understand your points about other products, but from my own life experiences I can't compare speeding cars or Big Macs or toys to a product like beer. It would be nice if the beer companies would do the right thing on their own and be candid about their product. Their customers and their victims deserve at least some candor. While they're still alive. While they're still sober.
[It would be nice if the beer companies would do the right thing on their own and be candid about their product.]
This is something that I wholeheartedly agree with. I am an advocate of full disclosure for any product or service being sold from one person (or company) to a consumer. I also think that it is appropriate for disclosure of products to be mandatory by law. People need this to be able to make informed decisions.
I don't know what your ideas are about restricting the sale or use of alcohol to adults by the government but that is something that I am not in support of, even if I accept everything else you've said about the horrific cost and zero benefits of alcohol. Prohibition (even partial prohibition) is not possible.
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