Center for Consumer Freedom

Anti-Alcohol Foundation Is A Duck

Last month we told you about a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel on underage drinking that is expected to call for increased taxes on adult beverages. Tomorrow morning the NAS panel will unveil its report at a public press conference.

According to an ad sponsored by the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) in yesterday's Roll Call, "The Newspaper of Capitol Hill," the NAS panel didn't consider the impact of any anti-underage-drinking programs sponsored by industry. NBWA wrote:

Congress gave the NAS $500,000 to study programs designed to reduce and eliminate underage drinking. In November 2002, the NBWA provided the NAS with materials on approximately 125 beer wholesaler anti-underage drinking programs that have been disseminated nationally, including educational materials for parents, motivational speakers for schools, public service announcements and resources for law enforcement. Unfortunately, the NAS panel didn't even bother to open the material.

It's no great surprise that the panel completely ignored industry's efforts to combat underage drinking. Eight of the twelve panelists have ties to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), an $8 billion alcohol opponent. As an op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal demonstrates, RWJF is leading a "back-door approach to de-legitimize social drinking."

If you doubt the panelists' guilt by association, you can read an open letter responding to RWJF's denial that it is anti-alcohol, posted on the website of the American Beverage Institute:

Have you ever heard the phrase, "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ..."?

While it may be true that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has not incorporated neo-prohibitionist language into its mission statement, it has embraced Prohibition in its deeds and in its philanthropic giving. Your organization has contributed more than $260 million to virulently anti-alcohol organizations from 1998 to 2002, and many millions more before and since then. After lavishing that kind of money on these neo-prohibitionist groups, you have more than a small obligation to accept the labels that attend their extreme anti-alcohol agendas.

Consider the Fighting Back program, which RWJF founded in 1988 -- and to which it has since given over $60 million. According to RWJF's own website, the Foundation has evaluated the program to "determine if Fighting Back communities have been able to achieve measurable reduction in the overall use of or demand for alcohol ..."

Another RWJF "project," The Oregon Partnership, used a portion of the $800,000 in RWJF grants to plaster Portland area buses with ads that depict a beer bottle as a hypodermic needle.

And on it goes, detailing RWJF grants that were intended to reduce alcohol consumption among all segments of American society. The letter concludes appropriately: "The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a duck."