By Joe Sixpack
Posted on Mon, Apr. 7, 2003 on Philadelphia Daily News

THE ANTI-ALCOHOL FORCES ARE OUT THERE, AND THEY'RE FAR MORE SUBTLE THAN LAST TIME

"I think this would be a good time for a beer."
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT,
April 7, 1933.

SEVENTY YEARS ago today, FDR raised a mug with a heroic toast and ended the nation's 14-year experiment in alcoholic temperance. Congress had amended the Volstead Act that had prohibited the sale of booze.

Beer - a less-potent 3.2 percent alcohol version - was legal again.

By December, the 18th Amendment would be repealed. Prohibition was finally finished.

Or was it? Don't look now, but Prohibition is rearing its ugly head again.

At least, that's the view of some in the alcohol industry, who point to increasing government and social controls over the sale and consumption of their product. Instead of Carrie Nation smashing bars with an ax, they say, an anti-alcohol effort led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and various health groups is threatening to take our beer away from us again.

"The front-door approach obviously failed 70 years ago," said John Doyle, co-founder of the American Beverage Institute and head of an industry group that has kept track of new restrictions on alcohol. "This time, they're coming in the back door."

MADD strongly denies it wants to outlaw alcohol. And last time we checked, booze was still legal in all 50 states, as long as you're at least 21.

But like tobacco in the last two decades, alcohol is facing restrictions that some of its proponents say are intended to make it a socially unacceptable - and, they fear, illegal - vice.

Most of the measures are aimed at reducing drunken driving, underage drinking and health-related problems - all good causes. Yet, the regulations affect everyone who consumes alcohol (and even some who don't), including moderate drinkers who are otherwise healthy and never break the law.

For example, Center City bars under pressure from Council have installed scanners to read the magnetic strip on the back of driver's licenses. They're designed to cut down on forged licenses used by underage drinkers. Yet, the scanners also read the name, address and other vital information of every patron who walks into the bar - even those who don't drink.

This loss of privacy, though, is a mere nuisance compared to other recent alcohol-control actions.

Just before last Christmas, for instance, police in Northern Virginia conducted a series of controversial raids they said were intended to stem drunken driving. Nine men were arrested on charges of public drunkeness.

None of the nine, however, was behind the wheel of a car. They were all arrested inside the bars, enjoying drinks during the holiday season.

None of them was causing a commotion. At least one didn't even drive. Yet, their arrests have been upheld by the courts, which means that, in Virginia, it is now illegal to get drunk in a bar.

"The climate we're in today is allowing bizarre instances like this," Doyle said. "It's an environment where people are being told by multi-million dollar government campaigns that, if you drink, you lose."

Doyle's group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, is funded by restaurants, bars and other industry organizations. It regularly decries the so-called "nannies" - overly protective individuals and agencies ranging from "smoke nazis" to the cholesterol counters at the Center for Science in the Public Interest - who it says are restricting individuals' rights to enjoy legal products.

As for alcohol, the group says "neo-prohibitionists" are seeking to reduce consumption across the board "to contain the social consequences of alcohol abuse."

In other words, hold everyone responsible for an individual's behavior.

To MADD, it was society's lack of responsibility that led to the plague of drunken driving in the first place.

"Prohibition was the worst thing that could have happened, as far as drunken driving was concerned," said Nancy Oppedal, MADD's past Pennsylvania state chair. "Because of all the problems that occured during Prohibition, people just wanted to wash their hands of the entire issue, and they never focused on the drunk-driving problem for the next 50 years... It also unleashed a tremendous amount of money from the alcohol industry, to squelch any public effort to get legislation against drunk driving."

Though drunken driving has generally declined in the past two decades, thanks to laws backed by MADD, the group continues to push elected officials to get even tougher. In 2000, it successfully lobbied for passage of a federal law that dropped the allowable blood alcohol content for drivers to .08 percent.

"The problem of [drunken-driving] has been reduced to just the hard-core alcoholics who do not respond to a broad appeal," Doyle said. "So MADD is redefining the problem to anybody who goes to a restaurant and has even one adult beverage."

Nonsense, says MADD.

"We're not a Prohibitionist organization," Oppedal said. "For those who drink, we encourage moderate consumption, which is one drink a day for women, and two for men. We're not after everybody.

"At the same time, we recognize that, though alcohol is a consumer product, it isn't the same thing as cheese and crackers. We're talking about a legal drug... It's not something that doesn't have a risk."

Equating alcohol with other drugs especially riles the alcohol industry. They cringed when they saw one recent anti-alcohol ad that portrayed a bottle of beer as a menacing, dripping syringe.

That's one reason winemakers and some brewers have promoted their product as an acompaniment to food. They even boast about the health benefits of drinking a glass or two a day.

But the alcohol industry's complaints about overly protective hyperbole from anti-alcohol groups are empty, next to the billions of dollars they spend on a constant stream of slick advertising - much of it clearly aimed at young drinkers. How can brewers claim to be "responsible" when their ads offer little more than dazed, lecherous 20-somethings splashing suds at wild parties?

"We can be our own worst enemies if we don't act responsibly," said Bill Covaleski, co-founder of Victory Brewing in Downingtown. "But we also have to take positions that counter MADD and other organizations in a reasonable fashion. If not, they'll eventually convince everyone that alcohol is a bad thing.

"So, we have to position alcohol as something that can be enjoyed responsibly, adds to the enjoyment of life and is healthy as well."

So, keep the beer cold, the printed advisory on every case of Victory warns, and recycle those bottles.

And one other thing:

"Resist Prohibition."

Contact Don Russell at the Daily News, Box 7788, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or via e-mail: joesixpack@phillynews.com