Two weeks before NBC's decision, AB chairman August Busch III, in a speech to wholesalers and employees, criticized "a liquor colleague" for trying to advance equivalence. Without naming Diageo, he said: "This company wants to establish so-called equivalence from both the taxation and social acceptance perspective. They are committed to blurring the long-held distinctions between hard liquor and beer

Citing the request from "bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate" who asked NBC to "reconsider" its decision to run distilled spirits ads, the network abruptly announced March 20 it "will not proceed" with straight brand ads. So this experiment ended just 3 months after its loudly proclaimed beginning. NBC never ran a spirits brand ad, and didn

Two new studies appeared recently that support the notion that moderate drinkers earn more than abstainers (though no one

The findings from the 3-year NIAAA college-drinking task force show that there’s still a long way to go before we fully understand campus drinking and campus drinking problems. "College Drinking, What It Is and What to Do About It," is the 250- page supplement to the leading academic alcohol research periodical Journal of Studies on Alcohol, and a companion document to NIAAA’s April "Call to Action" about campus drinking. Not surprisingly, NIAAA and the federally-funded researchers repeatedly conclude: "More research is needed." Indeed, the overview penned by an NIAAA official lists no less than 15 "key research recommendations," and ends with a list of 33 "key research questions" that NIAAA believes still need to be asked and answered.

After all of the education and prevention programs and all of the media coverage of campus drinking over the last few decades, one could easily conclude from this report that little has changed. The vast majority of college students drink: about 70% drink at least once/month, about 40% "engage in heavy episodic drinking." Many students suffer "adverse consequences" either from their own or others’ consumption. This task force found out yet again that white students tend to drink more than non-whites, and that there appears to be something about fraternities/sororities and athletic programs that attracts drinkers. Equally obvious: "most students do not believe that they have a drinking problem, regardless of the alcohol-related consequences they experience" and "the existing literature indicates a strong association between alcohol consumption and having multiple or casual sexual partners as well as alcohol use and the decision to have sex in the first place."

NIAAA’s statements about prevention are hardly more insightful, but are worth noting briefly because they’re likely to be widely-circulated. Educational strategies that simply provide information about drinking risks "do not appear to be effective in isolation," but education programs together with "environmental" components are "more likely to have significant impact." Social norms campaigns are "promising," according to the task force, but "no rigorous research …is yet available." NIAAA does admit "a link between advertising and alcohol consumption is intuitively compelling, but has not been consistently supported by research." Note too: NIAAA goes to fairly great lengths to head off any move to lower the minimum drinking age. The report even includes a study with advice about how to answer challenges to the effectiveness and appropriateness of the current 21 minimum age. Revealingly, in the main edition of the Journal of Studies on

Alcohol for the same month, the director of the Center for Alcohol Studies at Rutgers (which publishes the Journal), wrote an editorial that cited a seminal, 50-year-old study of college drinking that indicated the "nature and extent of use patterns and problems map almost perfectly on ‘modern’ results." That early study had also suggested universities can develop "effective solutions" to campus drinking problems if they "recognize the responsibility and specifically prepare themselves for it." One hopes that won’t take another 50 years. Ref 2

Put avoiding the sniffles on the list of potential health benefits for people who regularly consume wine. "Our findings suggest that moderate consumption of wine, but not other alcoholic beverages, may reduce the incidence of clinical common cold," concluded a group of Spanish and Harvard researchers recently in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Their study of 4300 adults found that those who consumed more than 14 glasses of wine per week were 40% less likely to develop a cold compared to those who did not drink any alcohol. Those who drank 8-14 glasses of wine per week cut their risk of developing a cold by 30%. Those who consumed 1-7 glasses of wine per week got the least benefit, but still a significant one, decreasing the risk of a cold by 23%.

"The association was even stronger among those consuming red wine exclusively," the authors wrote. In fact, the risk of a cold dropped by 60% for those who reported drinking up to 14 glasses of red wine-only. But since very few people in this study drank red wine exclusively, researchers were unable to find a "meaningful" analysis of that group. They also found the strong association between wine consumption and reduced risk of a cold held up after adjustments for smoking, contact with children, psychological stress, vitamin C and zinc intake.

While wine helped reduce the risk of common cold symptoms, "total alcohol intake and beer and spirits consumption were not related to the occurrence of common cold," the authors found. Among beer drinkers there was just a 1%, statistically insignificant, reduction for those who consumed more than 7 beer per week. For spirits, there was actually a slight increase in risk of developing a cold for those who drank either up to or more than 7 spirits drinks per week. So why would wine and not beer or spirits protect against colds? The authors suggested a "protective effect of some nonalcoholic components" which have anti-inflammatory effects. These components may help wine to "down-regulate the immune response that leads to clinical manifestations of common cold." The results of this year-long study in Spain support the findings of an earlier study done in 1993 that found moderate intake of alcohol decreased risk of common cold. The earlier study was limited to non-smokers and subjects were artificially exposed to a rhinovirus. Ref 1