after Gene's column and the comics, of course. Tuesday's was great--
sobering study, indeed! Not funny at all, but fascinating.
Drunks + Kids = Profits
By Richard Morin
Tuesday, May 30, 2006; Page A02
More than a third to nearly a half of all liquor industry revenue in
the United States comes from sales to underage drinkers and adults
who abuse alcohol, according to a sobering study conducted by a
research team from Columbia University.
"The combined value of illegal underage drinking and adult
pathological drinking to the industry was at least $48.3 billion, or
37.5 percent of consumer expenditures for alcohol in 2001," wrote
Susan E. Foster and her colleagues in the May issue of the Archives
of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. "Alternative estimates suggest
that these costs may be closer to $62.9 billion, or 48.8 percent of
consumer expenditures for alcohol."
Equally chilling was their finding that one in four underage
drinkers "already met [clinical] criteria for abusive and dependent
drinking." Researchers analyzed data from the census and four
national health surveys to arrive at their estimates.
Those figures suggest that the "alcohol industry has a compelling
financial motive to attempt to maintain or increase rates" of teenage
drinking and alcohol abuse by adults -- one big reason industry self-
regulation is never going to work and a strong argument for stiffer
government regulation of liquor ads, these researchers said.
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