Posted on 04/17/2003 1:03:26 AM PDT by WaterDragon
America’s anti-alcohol movement is composed of dozens of overlapping community groups, research institutions, and advocacy organizations, but they are brought together and given direction by one entity: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the RWJF has spent more than $265 million between 1997 and 2002 to tax, vilify, and restrict access to alcoholic beverages. Nearly every study disparaging alcohol in the mass media, every legislative push to limit marketing or increase taxes, and every supposedly “grassroots” anti-alcohol movement was conceived and coordinated at the RWJF’s headquarters. Thanks to this one foundation, the U.S. anti-alcohol movement speaks with one voice.
For the RWJF, it is an article of faith that diminishing per capita consumption across the board can contain the social consequences of alcohol abuse. Therefore, it has engaged in a long-term war to reduce overall drinking by all Americans. The RWJF relentlessly audits its own programs, checking to see if each dollar spent is having the maximum impact on reducing per capita consumption. Over the past 10 years, this blueprint has been refined. Increased taxes, omnipresent roadblocks, and a near total elimination of alcohol marketing are just a few of the tactics the RWJF now employs in its so-called “environmental” approach.
The environmental approach seeks to shift blame from the alcohol abuser to society in general (and to alcohol providers in particular). So the RWJF has turned providers into public enemy number one, burdening them with restrictions and taxes to make their business as difficult and complex as possible. The environmental approach’s message to typical consumers, meanwhile, is that drinking is abnormal and unacceptable. The RWJF seeks to marginalize drinking by driving it underground, away from mainstream culture and public places.
The RWJF funds programs that focus on every conceivable target, at every level from local community groups to state and federal legislation. Every demographic group is targeted: women, children, the middle class, business managers, Hispanics, Blacks, Whites, Native Americans. Every legal means is used: taxation, regulation, litigation. Every PR tactic: grassroots advocacy, paid advertising, press warfare. Every conceivable location: college campuses, sporting events, restaurants, cultural activities, inner cities, residential neighborhoods, and even bars.
The RWJF scored a major victory in 2000 with a federal .08 BAC mandate, and can claim credit for restrictions on alcohol in localities all over the country. But its $265 million has accomplished much more: it has put in place all the elements required for more sweeping change. This includes a vast network of local 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 the tobacco industry knows well.
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RWJF is a "philanthropic" tax free foundation that's a creation of Johnson & Johnson. They seem focused on control of the health care industry by defining as much of your life as possible as "health care", placing as much of your health care as possible under government control, and them in a position to influence the government agencies and bureaucrats involved.
I don't think it's as much about discouraging moderate drinking, as it is them getting to say what "moderate" is, and getting paid to make sure you're "moderated".
---- "The utterly insufferable arrogance of power, and the need for it, is an absolute fact of the human condition. -- Nothing can be done about it. - Just as the poor shall always be with us, so shall we have these infinitely shrewd imbeciles who live to lay down their version of 'the law' to others."
-unknown-
OTOH, why do we allow ourselves to be controlled?
The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
-Arthur Koestler-
Given all of your "Institute of Medicine" posts, I thought this was your mantra.
'Tis a shame that drug warriors, p.c. police, and other nanny staters have so chilled public discourse on the subject of drugs and alcohol that you feel compelled to make such a disclaimer. I, for one, believe that prohibition of any consensual activity between adults that harms no innocent third party is immoral and unconstitutional. Having said that, I believe that it is irrelevant whether I (or you, or anyone else) chooses to partake in such activities.
Memo to meddling nanny staters - that's known as "the pursuit of happiness".
you are anti RWJF which is shifting focus to the suppliers!
Who was prosecuting alcohol users?
We are talking logic.
No, you're not---you're creating a crazy quilt of unrelated concepts.
Cool. I say if you want to (re)legalize drugs, do the same thing the anti-prohibitionists did -- pass an amendment to the Constitution.
I'm in favor of that. How about you, MrLeRoy?
The thread is prohibition. Zimmerman is talking about initiatives to remove prohibition of drugs. He is your pro-druggie, I thought you would like to hear from him.
Given all of your "Institute of Medicine" posts, I thought this was your mantra.
And here I though cinFLA was the master of the non sequitur.
False parallel; an amendment empowering federal criminalization of drugs was never passed.
I see your point, but I wanted to make it clear that I have nothing to gain with my stance. It is purely based on logic, reason, and freedom. I stand by the disclaimer for that purpose.
More like "the selfish and irresponsible pursuit of immoral behavior".
C'mon, bassmaner, call it what it is. We're all adults here, and you don't need to couch this behavior in weasel words.
Come out and say what you really mean. You would like to be accepted in society, but would also like to participate in selfish, irresponsible, and immoral behavior. Right?
Whose morals? How do you know it to be irresponsible use? What's wrong with being selfish?
Where did he say he wanted drug users protected from social ostracism?
Don't confuse wanting to hear yourself talk about him with me wanting to hear from him.
I realize you have no heart for the truth.
tacticalogic, I didn't know you had a pro-druggie.
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