More exaggerated anti-alcohol numbers? NO WAY!!

http://www.just-drinks.com/ is reporting that a New Zealand government study on the "social costs of illegal drug and alcohol abuse" grossly exaggerated those costs, according to an independent study by two researchers at the University of Canterbury.

Social costs of excess alcohol consumption cost New Zealand's economy NZ$662 million (US$421m) annually, not the $4.8 billion cited in a report commissioned by the Ministry of Health, according to a study published this week by two researchers at the country's University of Canterbury. The Government study, completed by Business and Economic Research Ltd (BERL) and published in March 2009, found that social costs of illegal drug and alcohol abuse were a combined $6.8 billion.

"We find substantial flaws in BERL's method that together account for well over 90% of BERL's calculated costs of alcohol use," said researchers Eric Crampton and Matt Burgess, of the University's Department of Economics and Finance."The BERL report is wholly inadequate for use in assisting policy development," they said, adding that New Zealand recoups $516 million annually in alcohol duty taxes.

The researchers claimed that the BERL study contained "serious deficiencies" in methodology, including double-counting the cost of insurance and insured losses and not accounting for differences between alcoholics and the rest of the drinking population. Several differences between the BERL and Canterbury studies rest on what can be counted as a cost directly related to alcohol consumption.

I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find misrepresentation of numbers going on here! Now...would some U.S. researchers please do the same kind of analysis for the bizarrely huge numbers always thrown around by New Dry groups like CASA, PIRE, and NIAAA? And learn how to put out a decent press release when you get the results? Might be interesting to take the "cost of" numbers put out by various groups -- cost of alcohol, drugs, back pain, improper office furniture -- add them all together, and see if it's true that we're not actually producing anything in this country because it's all being eaten up by lost productivity and healthcare expenses.

Eerie Rise in College-age Drinking Deaths

This just out:

"Using figures from government databases and national surveys on alcohol use, researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found that drinking-related accidental deaths among 18- to 24-year-old students have been creeping upward -- from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005."

Before you shriek in horror, consider this truly frightening fact: 1,825 deaths is exactly five a day. What are the odds? Probably exactly the same that the number given for 1998, 1,440 deaths, is exactly one hundred and twenty a month.

Someone needs to say it, and I will: The NIAAA's Ralph Hingson* is pulling these numbers right out of his ass. College drinking deaths are an excruciatingly painful loss -- as the parent of two teenagers, it's starting to prey on my mind -- but this kind of ridiculous exaggeration is an offensive travesty. Take a look at this fact-based perspective on the issue.




* Heard of this guy? Here's some info from Behind the Neo-Prohibition Campaign: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, by Dan Mindus, an analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom**

Boston University sociologist Ralph Hingson runs the RWJF-funded “Join Together Online” program, which serves as a clearinghouse of information for the anti-alcohol movement. He is also one of the most careless--and frequently cited— researchers around. Hingson produced a study declaring that a national .08 BAC law would save “500 to 600 lives a year.” But to come up with that number, Hingson went cherry-picking, carefully selecting only certain .08 states so that the results would align with his prejudices. Perhaps the most highly respected auditor in the world, the GAO, calls Hingson’s study “unfounded.” Nevertheless, it is still cited by MADD and other neo-prohibitionist groups.
• In 2002, Hingson authored a headline-grabbing study that blamed alcohol for 1,400 fatalities among college students each year. Aside from stretching the definition of “alcohol-related fatality” to ridiculous lengths, Hingson did no research whatsoever with college students. Instead, he simply took statistics about alcohol-related fatalities among 18 to 24 year-olds and multiplied by their percentage of the general population. Unfortunately, this blunder didn’t stop The New York Times from beginning its coverage by reporting: “On an average day, according to a new study, four college students die in accidents involving alcohol.”

**Who are hardly lily-white themselves...though please note that this source, "Sourcewatch," practically gives the ridiculously anti-alcohol-biased Robert Wood Johnson Foundation a free pass...so I question their impartiality, as should you. Far as that goes, you should question mine. Hell, I do.

New Drys Right About One Thing...

We went to an end-of-year party for my daughter's robotics team (they compete in the FIRST competitions) last night out in the country, not far from the Spinnerstown Hotel. There were about 20 girls and an assortment of parents, friends, and little kids, all hanging out at the home of the school's physics teacher. We had a potluck dinner (all highly organized, with signup by spreadsheet and e-mail), with ice cream made on the spot by a compressed air-driven churn one of the mentors had built (we are talking about a picnic with engineers!).

Then there was a big bonfire (really big; there were whole trees in it, a pile of wood about 20 feet high), the girls presented awards and team gifts, some of them sang/rapped, there were fireworks. The girls walked down the road to a 'haunted house' (where planted friends who'd slipped away earlier screamed and jumped out at them) and shrieked so loud we could hear them a quarter mile away.

The one thing we didn't do was drink. There was no beer, wine, or spirits served. And you know...it's true. You can have fun without drinking. You don't have to drink. I've always agreed with the New Drys on this.

So why don't they understand that you can drink, and have fun, and not have it turn into a tragedy or an embarrassing evening? Perspective. Rationality. Some even-handedness.

There are real problems that stem from alcohol abuse. The New Drys don't help the situation by contending that there is no safe level of alcohol use. We the booze drinkers don't help the situation by pretending that alcohol is not really dangerous. We need to meet in the middle. Because you can have fun without drinking. And because you can be safe while drinking.

Wawa: Coffeetopia? Not Bloody Likely

I like Wawa stores, for convenience stores. They make their hoagies fresh if you want them (or you can grab a pre-made and go), they have my bank as their ATM provider (so no $2 service fees), they have a wide selection of stuff.

But as my man David Lo Pan sez, "Now, this really pisses me off to no end!" Wawa is running a promotion on their coffee right now (they promote their coffee a lot), calling themselves Coffeetopia (you can see it in the picture if you click on it to blow it up). And I'd like to know just how a freakin' place can call themselves Coffee-effin-topia when they're busily burning the shit out of their coffee, 24/7!

Coffee abuse pisses me off (to no end, as I mentioned). And this, well, I've seen Wawa employees combining pots of steaming black tar, making sure not a drop of nasty, black-burnt, acidic gleet gets wasted. The smell is an irritant, the taste is hideous. Though, of course, in this light-beer-drinking nation, we continue to buy it, because it does get you buzzed. Yeesh.

So my challenge to Wawa: would it kill you to dump the Bunn warmers and get some thermal carafes? For shit's sake, Sunoco gas stations have thermal carafes, and you're so much better than that. I've had an occasional fresh pot, right off the maker, at Wawa, and the coffee's fine, but once it's had The Treatment, I wouldn't kill slugs with it (because it would be cruel to the slugs, not because it wouldn't do an excellent job).

I know what you're thinking. Wawa probably sells a ton of coffee, and to tell the truth, it's because they get almost everything else right: size of cup, price, ease of self-service and plenty of real dairy options for white stuff, even more than one kind of coffee on at a time (though you can't really tell because it's burnt to hell). It's not La Colombe, but hell, Memphis Taproom ain't La Bec Fin either, and it's still damned good, it's perfect for what it is. So you're thinking, why on earth should we fix something that sure-hell don't seem to be broke?

Well, buhbie, it's because you tagged it as Coffeetopia, and you should have the decency to make it so. Thermal carafes are the way to go, and your sales will reflect it. Find a carafe that dispenses coffee fast (because that's the one thing the Bunn system has going for it; fast pours), buy a bunch of them, and put them in one store to see how it goes (I would humbly submit the 2250 Lincoln Highway location in Trevose...). Bet you get better sales, and a lot of compliments. Because that, Wawa-volk, would be Coffeetopia.

Oh, yeah. One more thing. Would it be too much to ask you to start selling diesel?