ambition + hysteria = published!

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, released a groundbreaking study last month regarding the consumption of alcohol.

We know the CASA study is “groundbreaking” because that’s what CASA wrote in the press release CASA issued about the CASA study (much in the way MySpace profiles often note that the author is a “superstud”).

However, the appellation was unnecessary to anyone who truly understood the implications of the study’s startling conclusion:

The alcohol industry gets a lot of money from its best customers.

How can this be so, you ask? Consider this: They buy a lot of alcohol. (Oh sure, it’s obvious now.)

Specifically, the CASA study found that nearly half of industry revenue comes from heavy drinkers and drinkers who are underage.

The former category accounts for over a quarter of industry revenues alone. Who are these heavy drinkers? The authors of the study included not just the diehard alcoholics (those pathetic individuals truly in need of help, wiling away the daylight hours drinking in bars, on street corners, and in state legislatures) but also those who met the DSM-IV criteria for “alcohol dependence.”

What are the criteria for inclusion in this category? Let’s say you blow off having dinner with your girlfriend’s parents to drink with your buddies, have way more than you intended even though you promised you wouldn’t, and have a hangover as a result. This is known in mental health circles as “alcohol dependence.” Outside of mental health circles this is known as “Saturday.”

The second category the CASA study targeted was underage drinkers. Who are these winsome little tykes, wide-eyed with natural curiosity, grass stains on their knees, shoelaces untied and hair gently tousled? Well, according to The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, one of the sources for the CASA study, mostly people aged 18 to 20.

Interestingly, the same study found that the more education you had, the more alcohol you consumed. This suggests two things:

1. The more you know, the more it makes you want to drink
2. Given the advanced levels of education achieved by the CASA research staff, they are probably blotto most of their waking hours. Statistically speaking, that is.

I can recall from my own college years that those pursuing postsecondary educations do tend to engage in somewhat heavy drinking, or more specifically, I vividly recall my parents dropping me off for my freshman year and then something about a diploma.

Sure, the researchers could have conducted their study excluding those who were not truly alcoholics and “children” over the age of 17 (you know, the ones who can vote, fight in Iraq, hold jobs and sign binding two-year cell phone contracts) but that would have caused a number of problems:

• No cool headlines like the Washington Post’s “Kids + Drunks = Profits.”
• It’s more difficult to drum up support for drastic curtailments on advertising and promotion using only relevant facts.
• Statements such as "It is reckless for our society to rely on an industry with such an enormous financial interest in alcohol consumption by children, teens, alcoholics and alcohol abusers to curb such drinking. Self regulation by the alcohol industry is a delusion that ensnares too many children and teens," as made by CASA Chairman Joseph A. Califano, Jr., would sound like the ravings of a madman rather than a serious researcher.

In other words: Experts + Opinions = Laws!

J.