The issue of 3d-party review of advertising continues to resurface. In March, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) adopted a resolution that "endorses the best practices recommendations" made by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last fall, including its position that the alcohol beverage industry should strengthen self-regulation efforts by adopting 3d-party, independent review of its advertising. NAAG further recommended that the FTC "review this matter" in the future, suggesting that NAAG won

Harvard researchers clearly believe that prevention programs in place are not sufficient, even while acknowledging that not enough time has passed to fully judge the success of the many recent actions taken at colleges around the US to reduce alcohol consumption among college students. College administrations certainly haven

News that rates of so-called "binge drinking" by college students changed little over the past 6 years grabbed lots of media attention again. Harvard researchers used the findings to urge colleges to move beyond "traditional" education efforts and "enact and enforce" more control policies. Yet while "binge drinking" (5 per occasion for males, 4 for females) remains a common college practice, and rates of "frequent" binge drinking increased from 97 to 99, surveys of college students also showed that frequent binge drinkers reported having had fewer alcohol-related problems in 99 than in 97. Predictably, the mainstream media overlooked that fact.

Harvard

In a decision that repeatedly compared tobacco advertisers to "pornographers," a US District Court judge in Massachusetts recently upheld a statewide ban on tobacco advertising that

What do the survey findings detailed above mean? They suggest that "we are now in an era of ‘problem amplification’ with greater attention on alcohol problem ‘discovery’ and subsequent treatment options," the authors wrote. "Thus, drinking behavior that might not have been thought of as problematic 16 years ago is now seen as problematic, because it deviates substantially from the changing norm." In other words, the number of alcohol problems has actually declined (as the drunk driving and cirrhosis figures would indicate), but people may simply be more willing to notice and identify problems now than in the past. And if people lower the number of drinks they think it takes to feel the effects or get drunk, they’re likely to believe that such levels are reached more often. Along the same lines, another study showed an increase in reports of "concern" about family and friends’ drinking during this period of reduced drinking.

These findings suggest that prevention efforts be targeted against real instances of harmful consumption and not against simply reducing per capita consumption. Even these Berkeley researchers point out that "so many factors other than amount of alcohol consumed may influence how much alcohol affects an individual, e.g. body size, hereditary factors, tolerance (our emphasis). Thus frequency of drunkenness may better represent conditions under which alcohol-related problems are likely to occur rather than a threshold such as 5+" drinks. But don’t expect less attention to the artificial definition of "binge" drinking or less focus on per capita consumption. Indeed, a third recent article by the same authors raises the red flag that the "overall decline" in drinking is "flattening" and "should be monitored carefully over the next few years in the event that long-term alcohol consumption trends may be shifting." Ref 2