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The Beer War!
By Al
Ruechel
This may come as a shock to you. I
hate beer. I think it is the most disgusting tasting liquid in the
world, second only to alcohol and cod liver oil. It tastes like
horse urine to be exact. Okay, so I've never tasted horse urine, but
if I had I'm sure it tastes about the same. I don't condemn you if
you drink it. If you're an adult have at it. It's not even a
religious thing for me cause I grew up in a Catholic community where
every single Catholic kid could consume enormous quantities of the
stuff and still make it to confession without puking their guts out.
When I was a kid my dad used to prop
me up on his knee and try to get me to take a sip. No way! I'd spit
it back in the can when he wasn't looking. The only time I ever
drank a can of beer was when I was bailing hay and it was 125
degrees in the barn and granddad told me the only way to survive the
heat and dust was to quaff a quick, ice-cold brew. He practically
poured it down my throat as my uncle held me down. It worked. The
thirst was gone. Of course, I'd end up losing it two minutes later
behind the tractor. No way was I going to let anyone see me in that
hurling position.
In high school a lot of my friends
would drink on the weekends. On Monday's there would always be the
blow by blow description of wrestling with a six pack or two. Truth
was nobody drank like they said they drank, at least not in high
school. We didn't have the time or the place or the nerve to be
caught with a six-pack and suffer the consequences. And in my high
school there were plenty of consequences. If the PE coach even
suspected you were hitting the brew he would run you till you
collapsed and begged for mercy and confessed your sin. And if you
ever got caught on school property the principal would make you cut
the grass with a hand shears or wash the restrooms with a
toothbrush. This I witnessed on at least three separate occasions.
Now in college it was a different
story. Everyone drank like fish… except me. But I was pretty good
at faking it and besides, somebody had to be the designated
clean-up-the-vomit-and-get-em-home-aliver. That was me. And now you
know why I hate beer to this day!
So today when I saw the story from
the National Institute of Substance Abuse about adolescent drinking
I could see the contradiction immediately. The study, using a series
of interviews, concludes that 25 percent of all the alcohol annually
consumed is done so by those underage. Wow! Don't get me wrong.
Having worked with kids in sports and in youth groups for years I
know that plenty of high school kids are binge drinkers.
Now here's the controversy. The Beer
Manufacturers Associations says for underage teens to be able to
consume 25 percent of all the alcohol sold annually each teen would
have to imbibe in excess of 120 eight-ounce drinks per month. Holy
smokes!
So who is telling the truth? Actually
both sides! With so much at stake on this issue both sides are
guilty of painting with an absolute brush. No one can argue that
teen age drinking is a huge problem. You can't argue with national
traffic death statistics that show alcohol consumption is involved
in fully 70 percent of all teenage traffic fatalities. You can't
argue with crime statistics and arrest rates that show alcohol is
involved in nearly 82 percent of those teenagers charged with
crimes. You can't argue with the growing number of deaths from
alcohol poisoning. You can't argue with the growing number of
adolescent alcohol treatment centers popping up all across this
nation. The problem IS serious.
The beer companies though have
numbers on their side. You don't want to get into an apples versus
oranges argument with gigantic corporations that spend hundreds of
millions of dollars on marketing. These are the same companies that
spend 200-million dollars a year marketing alcohol to the college
crowd and then say they're being responsible because they spend
10-million on responsible drinking literature. Oh please!
No sooner had the Abuse Council
released their data then the faxes were buzzing with the beer
company responses. Those figures are crazy. Kids aren't drinking 120
drinks a month? What are you nuts? And therein is the subtle message
they hope you are extracting from this contradiction. Without saying
it, they want you to think the problem with teen drinking is greatly
exaggerated and hope you will move on.
No thanks! If we move on more
teenagers are going to die at the hands of alcohol. I'm not
suggesting it should be banned. What I suggest is that we face up to
the reality that alcohol is a drug and the messages about its abuse
should be made stronger. I suggest folks caught driving under the
influence have their licenses revoked for five years. Teens caught
driving drunk should spend a month in jail. Anyone caught selling
beer to someone underage should be fined ten-thousand dollars. Teens
caught drinking should be required to enter a substance abuse
program. And parents that provide alcohol to underage teens should
be treated just like drug dealers and sentenced to jail time if
their kids are involved in any alcohol related incidents.
Tough? You bet! Teen drinking isn't
cute and it isn't about "Whatzup" or lizards or babes in
hot t-shirts. Alcohol is a drug and when its abused or its abuse
treated lightly we are burying our heads in the sand.
The Abuse Council may have gotten the
wrong figurers or they may have been exaggerated but they did get
the message right. Too many young kids are drinking too much beer
too early in life.
Like I said. I hate the taste of
beer. Even worse I hate the taste left in my mouth by companies so
fatted by profits from this uncontrolled drug they don't mind
sacrificing the youth of this nation.
Al Ruechel, copyright 2002, all
rights reserved
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