Nation: U.S. House discriminates against alcohol businesses
Pub Date: 1/1/2006
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Slams the Door on Beverage Retailers, Casino Operators
The U.S. House of Representatives acted Dec. 7 to prevent liquor stores and casinos in the hurricane devastated Gulf Coast from receiving any tax breaks in the rebuilding effort of the region, according to the Associated Press.
Rep. Wolf, an ardent anti-alcohol legislator, led a push to exclude a collection of allegedly non-essential businesses from special tax incentives. In addition to liquor stores and casinos, those businesses include country clubs, hot tub facilities, massage parlors, private and commercial golf courses, racetracks and tanning parlors.
Playing politics with peoples lives, Wolf claimed that such tax breaks were unacceptable at the time because, as the Washington Post reported, Republicans want to trim federal programs in order to curb budget deficits and offset the costs of reconstructing hurricane-damaged communities.
Part of an effort by Congress to lessen the tax burden of those rebuilding in the wake of 2005's destructive hurricane season, the House has been busy completing legislation that would accomplish that before temporary provisions expire.
The Senate has already passed a group of Gulf Coast region tax breaks that does not include terms that exclude and vilify what have been callously referred to as "recreational" businesses.
It appears at this point that the differences between the groups of legislation will be ironed out in Conference Committee with financial help or hindrance for liquor store and casino owners hanging in the balance.
Junk Science Defined: Study Claims The Sight of Alcohol Can Lead to Violent Hostility
Bruce Bartholow, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri-Colombia, has claimed that even the mere sight of alcohol brings aggression-related thoughts to mind, which can have "a specific influence on perceptions of hostility."
In other words, Bartholow claims that his findings, based on responses from 246 undergraduate students who participated in two experiments, demonstrate what researchers and the general public have long known of a link between drinking alcohol and increased aggression.
In one test that Bartholow conducted, flashing images either alcohol images, images of weapons or neutral images, including plants were shown to participants. Participants were then shown words and asked to press a button identifying words. Bartholow claims that participants were able to more readily identify aggression related words after being shown alcohol images and weapons images.
Despite the fact that Bartholow seemingly did not control for the possibility that it was the images of violent weapons that made his responders more aggressive-minded, or that the students who support his findings were predisposed to believe what Bartholow claims to have found, or that he did his testing on 246 undergraduate students at a single university, thus making his sampling incredibly narrow, his study will still be published in the January issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
HHS and Ad Council Launch PSA Campaign to Prevent Underage Drinking
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in partnership with the Ad Council launched a national public service advertising (PSA) campaign designed to prevent underage drinking. The campaign aims to encourage parents to speak to their children about alcohol in an effort to prevent and reduce underage drinking.
Novel to the effort is the idea for parents to address their children about alcohol before those children are introduced to it. The campaign is aimed at parents of middle-school-aged children, between the ages of 11-15. The impact and influence that can be made on kids of that age is noteworthy.
Said HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, "These new ads will help us create and sustain a strong national commitment to prevent and reduce underage drinking."
The beverage alcohol industry has long supported the role that parents take as the most influential factors of whether minors decide to abuse beverage alcohol.
A recent study by the American Medical Association reinforced the industry's claims about minors accessing beverage alcohol primarily from friends and family, including parents. Addressing parents roles through public service announcements is sensible, given what is known.
Big Tobacco Lawyers Move On to Big Soda?
With their wallets hardly empty from their last legal crusade, attorneys who claim to operate on behalf of the public interest are at it again and this time their target is a drink machine.
In a recent announcement, Stephen Gardner, staff lawyer for the Center for Science in the Public interest, which has been called a nutrition advocacy group, has said that his group plans to file a lawsuit in the next few months seeking to ban the sale of sugary beverage in schools.
Mr. Gardner will be joined in the suit by a handful of other lawyers, some of which were active in successful tobacco lawsuits.
The impetus for the suit stems from what Mr. Gardner and his colleagues argue is an "obesity epidemic" that is sweeping the nation s schools and endangering students who apparently don't know any better and are being tempted by lighted drink machines every day they go to school.
This, to the plaintiffs, constitutes some sort of legal infringement.
Seeking to flatten the fizz from the $92 billion beverage industry, the CSPI lawyer will file the suit in Massachusetts, which has proven to be a welcome place for lawsuits of a similar nature.
The beverage industry is fighting back and its trade association, the American Beverage Association, is ready to demonstrate that soda consumed at school is but a minor part of caloric consumption in youths.
Who could lose the most should the CSPI public health advocates succeed in their yet-launched efforts? Sadly, it could be America s schools.
Contracts with beverage companies provide cash strapped schools with funding. While critics contend that not enough of the profits go to the schools to make a difference, school boards across the country have yet to volunteer en masse to give back millions in funding and remove drink machines from their schools in order to protect their students.
Undeniably, money does come back to the schools for what is the relatively minor cost of the space in which to place the drink machines.
The definition of what constitutes an unhealthy drink will certainly be examined as will the science that links soda and obesity. Though beverage companies have pledged to not sell soda in elementary at all and in middle schools during the school day, the nutrition watchdogs say that's not enough.
It has not yet been determined whether the plaintiffs will seek to recover billions of dollars in "damages."
Source: ABL Leader, January, 2006, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.