Attitudes and alcohol
By Peter Reuell / News Staff Writer

'Tis the season to be jolly, but for many folks around the holidays, jolly comes in a bottle.

-- PHOTOGRAPH -- The size of beer servings increases the likelihood that holiday celebrants will get behind the wheel drunk. (Milton Amador photo)

Between family get-togethers, office parties, and the usual nights out with friends, it's common for the wine to start flowing and only natural to throw back a few cocktails.  The problem, just about everybody agrees, comes when those same folks decide to get behind the wheel.  Every year, groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving say, thousands of drivers are killed on American highways as a result, destroying families, and costing taxpayers billions.

Alcohol retailers, however, insist groups like MADD are missing the point, and accuse anti-alcohol groups of leading a cabal against so-called "social" drinkers with the aim of moving society closer to a new era of Prohibition.  Retailers and restaurants in MetroWest, however, say the arguments haven't induced their customers to put down their drinks yet.

At some retailers, business is booming, not because people are drinking more, but because they're drinking in different ways.  For many drinkers, the occasional bottle of wine or pint of beer has taken on a tinge of the gourmet as the market for microbrews and speciality wines continues to grow.

"We're ahead of where we've been in the past," Julio's Liquors General Manager Michael Cucinotta said this week. "I don't see any difference in people's buying patterns."

More than any MADD campaign, the economy's ups and downs affect
sales. When times are tough, Cucinotta said, people may buy inexpensive
beer or wine, "but usually they still buy the same amount."

"Our experience, from what we've seen, is people want to be more educated about alcohol," he added. "At least 50 percent of our sales are wine, high-end wine. They want to learn about it, they want to be educated about it. It's becoming a hobby, not to drink, but to learn about it and enjoy it."



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For a society that's being led, as industry groups claim, into a neo-Prohibitionist era, alcohol seems to be going strong in America.  Traditionally joked of as a scene of alcohol-fueled debauchery, the office holiday party remains a tradition in thousands of companies, a 1998 survey by the Virginia-based Society for Human Resource Management found.

Of the 600-plus companies responding to the survey, more than 80 percent still hold a holiday party, and more than half serve alcohol.  Nearly 60 percent of companies serving alcohol did so through a cash bar, and a vast majority of companies took steps -- such as hiring professional bartenders, limiting the time alcohol could be served, making special hotel arrangements, or limiting the number of drinks available -- to avoid excessive drinking.

The social pendulum may not be swinging toward a dry America, but some in industry have taken steps to control drinking.  Nearly two decades ago, in recognition of the need for tougher alcohol laws, the commonwealth passed laws aimed at cutting off "Happy Hour" celebrations at bars and restaurants.

Bruce Potter, director of membership service for the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, said the law restricted the ability to serve pitchers of beer, or multiple drinks at once, and had an immediate impact on the bottom line.

The then-owner of Hillcrest Catering, Potter saw his sales go from about $550,000 annually to about $350,000.

Today, though, Potter believes most restaurants and bars have adapted to the rules and can be successful.

"I think everybody has sort of gotten used to that," Potter said.

To help businesses stay within the law the Southborough-based association offers training to thousands of bartenders and waitresses annually. Just this year, the association held more than 100 classes, training nearly 2,000 servers.

"I think the industry has really paid attention and is trying to have their employees aware of it," he said. "Social drinkers might have a problem one night out of the year, they aren't really the people that are the problem."



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About the only thing the two sides can agree on is that drinking and driving is too often a fatal mix.

As with most issues surrounding alcohol, however, there's disagreement on the scope.

Each year, MADD officials insist, nearly half the fatalities on American streets are the result of alcohol impairment, costing taxpayers more than $114 billion annually.

In 2001 alone, the most recent year for which statistics are available, more than 17,000 "alcohol-related" fatal accidents were recorded nationwide.

But contrary to industry opinion, MADD sees statistics like those not as the first argument to pulling alcohol off shelves, but as a powerful argument to get drunks off the road, national President Wendy Hamilton said.

"This is not about drinking," she said. "This is about people who drink alcohol and then get behind the wheel and endanger themselves and others.

"We want people to go out and enjoy themselves, but we want them to get home safe."

To hear Richard Berman tell it, though, accident statistics cited by MADD are artificially inflated in an attempt to demonize alcohol and those who consume it.

In calculating the 17,000 accidents cited in 2001, MADD included accidents involving pedestrians who were drunk and accidents in which a driver who had been drinking was not at fault.

Taking those accidents out of the equation, a Los Angeles Times study of accident data found, the actual number is closer to 5,000, said Berman, a lobbyist for the American Beverage Licensees, a trade group representing liquor retailers.

"This is the problem that interest groups have," he said. "They refuse to declare victory.

"The drunk driving problem now is down to a core of alcoholics. Most people do not drink to levels that create endangerment for themselves or others."

Statistically, Berman seems to have a case.

Nationwide in 2001, statistics show, one-third of all drivers arrested for drunk driving were repeat offenders.

Of more than 4 million licensed drivers in the Bay State, 120,000 have been arrested for driving under the influence, and more than 65,000 have been arrested two or more times.

And according to National Highway Transportation Safety Administration figures, nearly three-quarters of all fatal alcohol-related accidents in 2002 involved drivers who tested well above the .08 blood-alcohol limit most states use to determine if a driver is legally drunk.

"The problem today is a public health problem, not a traffic safety problem," Berman insisted. "You can pass all the laws you want, if somebody's an alcoholic they're going to keep drinking."

For too much of the public, though, education about alcohol's effects isn't up to par, Hamilton said.

Contrary to Berman's assertion, Hamilton allowed that most people could have a drink or two after work and still drive home safely.

"But a drink is a 12-ounce beer, or a five-ounce glass of wine...it's not a 32-ounce margarita," she said. "What MADD says all the time is the safest way to drive is without any alcohol in your system."

The fact is, Hamilton said, Berman's job as a lobbyist for the industry is to create the belief among the public that the sky is falling, when nothing could be further from the truth.

"The rhetoric that Mr. Berman spews about this issue, and MADD being neo-Prohibitionists is literally crap, because he knows I drink alcohol," she said.

In response to a recognition that "problem drinkers" make up a large number of those arrested for drunk driving, MADD has pushed for tougher laws at the federal level to limit the ability of repeat offenders to drive, and increasing fines and prison terms for those drivers who are caught.

"This is not about the social drinker," Hamilton said. "He's (Berman) just trying to make the public think that's what it's about."


(Peter Reuell can be reached at (508) 626-4428, or at preuell@cnc.com)

 

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