Center for Consumer Freedom

Your Tax Dollars At Work ... for Anti-Alcohol Activists

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will soon release a major report on how to prevent underage drinking. Americans deserve a serious, science-based examination of this important topic, but the NAS report will almost certainly be a piece of anti-alcohol propaganda. It is expected to call for increased taxes on adult beverages and stricter regulations on marketing and advertising. Those recommendations target adult consumers, not just underage drinkers. Which is precisely the point.

Nine of the 12 "experts" chosen to sit on the NAS panel are associated with -- if not self-proclaimed -- anti-alcohol activists. Eight of the twelve have ties to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), an $8 billion alcohol opponent. Seven have endorsed increased taxes or restrictions on adult beverages.

The panelists include:

Marilyn Aguirre-Molina, a former RWJF Senior Program Officer (and now a RWJF consultant) who accused alcohol companies in 1990 of "killing us softly" and proclaims that "they steal our heroes, holidays, and values in order to sell booze." While at RWJF, Aguirre-Molina co-founded the National Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco Prevention (LCAT), an organization that proclaims that "problems can even result from moderate drinking." In 1992 she created a video titled "Marketing Disease to Hispanics: The Selling of Alcohol and Tobacco." At the RWJF-funded Alcohol Policy Conference XIII, she was on a panel entitled "Preventing alcohol problems: Popular approaches are ineffective, effective approaches are politically impossible."

Philip Cook, a "sin tax" advocate who recently won the RWJF Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research (which includes up to $275,000 in grants) for study on "The Health and Social Consequences of Alcohol Taxation and Control." This followed his 2002 report, in which he concluded that "current [alcohol] excise taxes are too low, both nationally and in every state. The rates are far less than the average social cost of each drink consumed. Raising the excise tax would be in the public interest."

Judy Cushing, CEO of the RWJF-funded Oregon Partnership, which has run public advertisements linking beer with heroin and other illegal drugs. Cushing is currently lobbying to increase Oregon's excise tax on beer.

Mark Moore, author of a New York Times editorial titled: "Actually, Prohibition Was a Success." Moore argued that the criminalization of alcohol was effective in reducing alcohol-related problems.

Richard J. Bonnie, the NAS panel chair, who was previously the chair of a RWJF-funded Committee on Injury Prevention and Control. Bonnie gave a presentation to a RWJF-funded "Conference on the Historical and Cultural Aspects of Substance Abuse." He has also represented "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, and advocates the legalization of marijuana.

Denise Herd, recipient of RWJF's "Innovators Combating Substance Abuse" award for 2000, which carried a $300,000 cash prize. Herd reviewed a report on alcohol marketing from the RWJF-founded Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth.

Joel Grube, director of the Prevention Research Center at the anti-alcohol, RWJF-funded Pacific Institute on Research & Evaluation (PIRE). Grube has authored a PIRE study funded by RWJF, and was a panelist at the RWJF-funded Alcohol Policy Conference XIII.