Beer's More Dangerous Than Heroin (because 16 neo-prohibitionists say so)

Heard about the English "study" that says beer is more dangerous than heroin?

Horseshit. My friend and colleague Jay Brooks takes a look at the actual article from The Lancet and neatly disassembles it. Check it out.

Please, everyone: don't read the headlines. Read the science. In this case, you'll find it's sadly lacking.

Jay Brooks Takes Over

Very glad to see Jay Brooks taking over Bill Brand's On Beer column at the Bottoms Up Bay Area drinks blog. It was a complete shock when Bill passed away after a tragic accident (during San Francisco Beer Week), and it's a nice sense of completion as Jay picks up the pen.

Congratulations, Jay. You are the man for the position.

Brooks takes on the Marin Institute

Jay Brooks has written a great diatribe -- not over the top enough for a rant, but it'll do -- about the booze-hatin' Marin Institute's support for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed nickel-drink tax. He exposes all the crap about this proposal: the basic unfairness of it, the bogus justifications for it, the nebulous "statistics" used to support it, the imposition of morality it represents, all that, and does it well. Anti-alcohol groups like the Marin Institute, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, like the Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, like the Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth -- no wait, they folded their tents and slipped away into the night (or another Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded anti-booze group, same difference) -- consistently misrepresent the facts, rig the statistics, and spin the studies. This one is a classic.

But I have to disagree with Jay on one thing, this:

"I can’t help but be surprised to see neo-prohibitionists — an overwhelmingly conservative bunch — co-opt liberal socialist (and President-elect) Barack Obama’s tagline and appropriate it for their own use."

Neo-prohibitionists are not overwhelmingly conservative! That's what makes them dangerous. They are, as they were 90 years ago, before the neo- part came along, a movement that spans the political spectrum and uses whatever tools are to hand. They are against alcohol for moral reasons, for "health" reasons, and often, sadly, because their family was blighted by an alcoholic. We cannot assume that they only come from one side of the aisle...if we do, we'll be blindsided.