In Sarasota, Fla., Judge Becky Titus offered first offenders a chance to reduce their punishment if they put a red-lettered bumper sticker on their cars that read, ”Convicted DUI”–driving under the influence.
Last month, scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health announced the development of a drug that reverses alcohol`s intoxicating effect on the brain.
The synthetic compound, called Ro 15-4513, blocks the chemical change that occurs in the brain when alcohol reduces inhibition and anxiety. Both effects are considered to be reinforcing factors among heavy drinkers. The compound, however, does not reduce the physical consequences of alcohol on the liver or respiratory system.
Earlier this year, 85 American economists signed a petition asking Congress to raise alcohol taxes to help offset budget reductions. Martin Feldstein, former chairman of President Reagan`s Council of Economic Advisers, and his wife, Kathleen, also an economist, recently advocated adjusting the tax on beer to keep pace with the tax on other alcoholic beverages. Such a tax would raise about $4 billion a year, Feldstein claimed, and would add about 10 cents to the price of a can of beer.
These three developments are part of an increasing collection of evidence suggesting the United States is again on the threshold of profound change in social attitudes toward alcohol. Scientific research on alcohol is
accelerating dramatically, and changing lifestyles, along with new legislation, are beginning to alter our drinking habits.
Not since the years preceding Prohibition have there been more calls for restraint in the use of alcohol.
Many factors are fueling the change, including a continuing interest in health and fitness, but the concern about illegal drugs certainly quickened the pace in 1986.
Almost every section of the multibillion-dollar omnibus drug act passed in October included references to alcohol. Though illegal drugs are considered more politically sexy, the two problems were linked in a well-publicized fashion, and that, experts say, is important for long-term perceptions.
Critics in the alcohol field called the congressional act only legislative lip service and complained that it hardly addressed the social costs of drinking, which are estimated to be twice those of illegal drugs.
The critics would like society to connect the two forms of drug-taking in social consciousness as well as with words. It is certainly as illegal for a 14-year-old to drink a can of beer as it is for him to smoke marijuana, though few would equate the two in severity. If current trends continue, however, these offenses someday might be considered comparable.
”The attention to the war on drugs certainly has brought people out of the woodwork,” said Thomas Seessel, executive director of the National Council on Alcoholism. Nonetheless, he said, ”the major concern of the White House is crime and punishment. People there are more concerned about drugs they don`t take.”
Still, the Department of Education intends to distribute $159 million in block grants to governors and schools next month as part of the new drug legislation. Illinois is slated to get about $7.5 million for alcohol- and drug-prevention programs.
Outside of government, health and fitness concerns continue to contribute to the move to lighter drinking habits. As almost 70 million ”baby boomers” move into middle age, those concerns will increase.
”About two-thirds of all deaths in this country are premature,” said Dr. Kenneth Pelletier, an author and professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. ”And about two-thirds of all deaths under 65 are preventable,” he said, because they involve lifestyle and are brought on by personal choices–whether to smoke or drink, for instance.
Liver disease, the traditional alcoholism indicator, is among the top 10 killers in the U.S. But the total number of alcohol-related diseases, plus accidents and homicides associated with alcohol, could be considered the No. 3 killer in the nation, after heart disease and cancer.
With alcohol, the key issues are about physical and mental impairment and about society`s right to intervene, especially in keeping drunken drivers off the road.
The anti-alcohol movement`s biggest victory is its success against drunken driving, a drive that began in the late 1970s and is credited with saving an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 lives a year.
The effort to eliminate the drunken driver has been welcome, but it has raised other social policy topics, including the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure during random police roadblocks.
So far, the courts have produced mixed opinions on that issue. At least 30 states and the District of Columbia use such roadblocks. They have been challenged in 17 state courts, and at least three courts have ruled that the roadblocks are unconstitutional. Others have demanded procedural changes. The U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on a roadblock case.
The Supreme Court did decide this month, however, to review the federal pressure to get states to return the minimum drinking age to 21. South Dakota challenged a 1984 law that would, beginning in 1987, withhold federal highway funds from states that do not have a drinking age of 21. South Dakota claims that the issue involves states` rights.
In 1979, only 14 states set their minimum drinking age at 21. By 1984, when the controversial law was passed, that number had risen to 23; it now is 41. New York state claims alcohol-related accidents among drivers under 21 have declined 44 percent since the drinking age was raised. Other states have reported a decline closer to 20 percent.
Parallel to those issues, individual judges are expressing their own concerns about drunken drivers. ”The courts and the laws are becoming so tough against drunk driving, and there`s not enough room in the prisons,”
said David Ketter, director of the Valley Hope treatment center in Atchison, Kan. ”Not that these people should be in prison. They are being diverted into treatment, and that is becoming more attractive to judges.”
Perhaps more important, the grass-roots social evolution of attitudes toward alcohol is moving into the schools, including medical schools, which are rethinking their role in talking about alcohol, its use and abuse.
Professional organizations also are becoming more involved. Two months ago, a group of physicians known as the American Medical Society on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies held its first certification exam, for about 2,000 physicians trained in alcohol and drug abuse.
On the social side, traditional ideas of entertaining, at home and in public, have undergone tremendous change. A New Jersey court last year held that the host of a private party was liable for the actions of a drunken guest after he left the host`s home. That legal precedent has spurred a re-examination of insurance practices and liability concerns.
Social attitudes toward drunkenness and toward seeking treatment for alcohol abuse are changing rapidly. It was only 14 years ago that public intoxication was decriminalized.
In restaurants and bars in many large cities, there are signs cautioning pregnant women not to drink, prompted by a new awareness of alcohol`s potential consequences such as fetal alcohol syndrome.
Surveys show that companies pay at least twice the medical benefits for families with alcoholic members than for those without, and this finding is encouraging more companies to establish employee assistance programs.
Insurance companies set treatment standards in the past simply by limiting what they would pay for. There are indications that insurers are becoming more interested in outpatient programs.
Medical advances on blood-screening techniques and brain-wave scans to help identify potential alcoholics, even before they begin drinking, have energized research. The effects of alcohol on women and among minorities are receiving new attention.
”Developments in alcoholism genetics, most of which have occurred only in the last 10 years, have laid the groundwork for dramatic advances in the coming decade,” according to a National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) paper published last year.
”Research on alcohol . . . is at the threshold of a major scientific breakthrough. There are exciting sets of data, more so in alcoholism than in any other field of addiction,” said Dr. Henri Begleiter, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.
The research is important not only for theoretical knowledge, but for practical application. This month, for instance, a study of Navy pilots showed their cockpit performance was impaired for 14 hours after drinking and for several hours after the last bit of alcohol could be traced in their bloodstreams.
Some cautions are being sounded, however. David Musto, a medical historian at Yale University, worries that there may be a backlash against the current temperance movement.
”This country has a problem with excesses,” agreed Dr. Morris Chafetz, the first director of NIAAA in 1970. Chafetz said he thinks antialcohol activists such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest–nicknamed
”neo-Prohibitionists” by the alcohol industry–want restrictive legislation that stops just short of prohibition.
”Americans are always looking for a technological pill. We`re always looking for a simple solution to a complex problem. I suppose that`s why some people drink in the first place,” said Chafetz, who has joined with the alcohol industry in promoting moderate drinking and declaring, ”Our goal is to make getting drunk socially unacceptable.”
In response to changes in Americans` tastes and drinking habits, the industry has repackaged many of its products, lowered alcohol content by selling new beverages such as wine coolers and created premixed drinks that appear to be less potent. Its goal is not only to retain market share, which has been level or dropping in the last six years, but to forestall legislation that would either increase taxes or restrict sales.
The alcohol industry and ancillary groups have sponsored advertisements advising moderation and programs such as TIPS (a cute acronym for a cumbersome title: Training for Intervention Procedures by Servers of Alcohol), aimed at educating bartenders, waitresses and others who serve or sell alcohol.
”The key to TIPS is not how to spot a drunk, not how to deal with a drunk, but how to prevent someone from becoming drunk,” said William Delphos, director of the Washington-based program. The aim is not only to buttress the defense in any potential liability lawsuit, but to ward off restrictive local regulations such as the shortening of operating hours and the elimination of happy hours and other drinking promotions.
The introduction of the program and a drop in the number of disorderly incidents on Martha`s Vineyard prompted the selectmen of Edgartown, Mass., to rescind a decision to close the bars earlier.
Brewers provide much of the funding for professional sports through national and local advertising. Politically, the alcohol lobby ”is a significant lobby. . . . Ten years ago, they pretty much ran the scene (on Capitol Hill) as they wanted to,” said Dr. Ernest Noble, a former NIAAA director who stunned the alcohol industry in the late 1970s by suggesting that the federal government had a public health responsibility to control alcohol consumption.
The new attitudes toward alcohol focus especially on family disruption, and they raise important questions about treatment of people who are physically dependent on alcohol.
Because alcohol is recognized as a major factor in both spouse and child abuse, a provision for waiving confidentiality rules and reporting on such abuse was included in this year`s Children`s Justice Act.
A new sense of social responsibility is emerging from lawsuits, such as one in Chicago filed by Wayne Hoover against the makers of Old Style beer and Jack Daniel`s whiskey.
Hoover, who claimed he lost three jobs during his seven years of drinking, hopes to force the use of warning labels on beer, wine and other spirits, similar to warnings on cigarette packages. In the product liability field, no cigarette or alcohol manufacturer has yet been forced to pay compensation for use or abuse of its product.
But the pressure on the industry is mounting. Though attempts to get ingredient and warning labels have failed, temperance activists are turning to taxation as a method of control. Federal excise taxes on beer and wine have not been raised since 1951; the first increase on liquor occurred in October, 1985, when the tax was raised $2 a gallon.
In a report by the National Academy of Sciences, Philip Cook of Duke University concluded that the latest research showed ” . . . the virtually inescapable conclusion that the demand for alcohol by heavy drinkers is responsive to price.”
But the social fabric is being rewoven regardless of short-term financial considerations. Professional sports teams have begun to cut off beer sales before the game ends to help deal with unruly fans and to avoid sending drivers out to their cars drunk.
Santa Monica, Calif., and towns elsewhere on the West Coast are banning the sale of ”short dogs,” bottles of cheap, fortified wine favored by winos because of the price and extra kick.
Last July, the Supreme Court upheld a court decision in Puerto Rico to ban advertising of casino gambling on the island. The ruling may have set a precedent for restricting alcohol advertising. In the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the high court said it would be a ”strange constitutional doctrine” for lawmakers to be able to restrict or ban a product, but not the advertising for it.
Even attitudes toward alcoholism are being revamped. Actor Chevy Chase is the latest of many celebrities to check into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., to be treated for drug or alcohol abuse. ”It`s almost too fashionable now to say you have the disease,” grumped Dr. Chafetz.
As if to confirm that, one veteran Hollywood actor both privately and publicly tells people that he, too, has gone for treatment at the Betty Ford Center. He`s lying.
