CSPI and the minimum drinking age: Science in the interest of American fascism

The Center for Science in the Public Interest [which really should be known as the Center for Science as Paternalistic Influence] has trashed my movie theater popcorn, lambasted take-out Chinese, and brutally attacked the menus at some of my favorite Italian restaurants.

I'll give them this, they're honest about their Nanny State pretensions.

For example, with respect to CSPI's campaign against youthful and underage drinking,

Economic studies have concluded that increasing alcohol excise taxes is one of the most effective means of saving young lives and reducing the incidence of disease caused by alcohol. But the tax rates are still far too low to compensate for the costs of alcohol problems to society, and they are constantly being eroded by inflation. Further increases and indexing for inflation would allow governments to obtain needed revenue, as well as to reduce alcohol consumption among young people. CSPI has vigorously supported higher state and federal excise taxes and urged that new tax revenues be used to fund prevention and treatment programs.

Not content with higher taxes, CSPI also wants specific media restrictions mandated by the government:

CSPI has pushed for legislation to limit alcohol advertising and to mandate “counter-ads” on television to balance advertising’s glamorized – and false – view of drinking. CSPI is also spearheading an effort for a federally funded media campaign to discourage underage drinking.

All of this falls under CSPI's statement of objectives, which include this:

Represent citizens’ interests before regulatory, judicial, and legislative bodies on food, alcohol, health, the environment, and other issues.

Of course, citizens cannot be trusted to know what's in their best interests.

Since 1971, CSPI has consistently focused on nutrition – and for good reason. Unhealthy eating, together with physical inactivity, kills hundreds of thousands of Americans prematurely each year, and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other diet-related afflictions cost more than $150 billion in health care costs and lost productivity.

To curb the wasted lives and economic losses, CSPI focuses its advocacy and education efforts on three groups: policy-makers– to make beneficial changes in laws and regulations – the food industry– to make healthful changes in their products – and consumers – to make healthy changes to their diets.

What's clear is that not only are American citizens inept, they can't even be educated to make better choices: if necessary they have to be coerced through regulation and legislation.

But what I really want to target this evening is CSPI's crusade to make sure that the legal drinking age in the United States is never again lowered to 18 years old. Remember, if you will, that in 1984 Congress followed its usual procedure of blackmailing the states with the National Minimum Purchase Age Act, which threatened to take away Federal highway funds from the States that did not do so by 1986.

Thus did Congress disenfranchise millions of young men and women old enough to vote, drive motor vehicles, and serve (and die) in the US military. This principle apparently did not and does not matter.

Ah, but CSPI has the weight of research behind it, right?

Let's take a look at the organization's Fact Sheet: Lowering the Minimum Drinking Age Is a Bad Idea. CSPI cites research on "youth alcohol consumption," the newest of which is 17 years old, while the eldest hails from nearly four decades ago. But, hey, footnotes always look impressive, don't they?

Besides, the last study cited in this section is particularly revealing of the whole CSPI:

Bonnie, RJ, “Discouraging Unhealthy Personal Choices Through Government Regulation: Some Thoughts About the Minimum Drinking Age,” In Minimum-Drinking-Age Laws, Wechsler, H (Ed.), Lexington, MA: DC Heath Co., pp. 39-58, 1980.

CSPI cites only a single decade-old paper to support the following assertion:

The younger a person begins using alcohol, the greater the chance of developing alcohol dependence or abuse some time in their life. Of those who begin drinking at age-18, 16.6% subsequently are classified with alcohol dependence and 7.8% with alcohol abuse. If a person waits until age-21 before taking their first drink, these risks decrease by over 60%.

Let's think about that one for a moment. "If a person waits until age-21 before taking their [sic] first drink," this means that CSPI is formally advocating that parents should have no role whatsoever in teaching their children about the proper usage of alcoholic beverages. In fact, striking by its absence is ANY reference AT ALL to the voluminous literature that discusses the effectiveness of parental strategies for teaching responsible drinking.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the end of the sentence, which praises post 21-year-old drinking onset, hints at the real agenda of CSPI: that NO drinking by anyone would be the best thing for America.

That would go hand-in-hand with the strategy mentioned above--to continually raise alcohol excise taxes, with the tax rates indexed for inflation.

But maybe I'm being socially irresponsible and excessively callous about the tens of thousands of lives CSPI claims have been saved by raising the drinking age.

Here's what CSPI claims:

In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Purchase Age Act, to encourage each state to enact a minimum legal purchase age (MLPA) of 21 by 1986. The result was impressive: an estimated 1,071 lives were saved in 1987 alone. From 1975 - 1996, the estimated number of lives saved reached nearly 17,000. In addition to a 63% decline in alcohol-related crash fatalities among young drivers since 1982, findings show that the MLPA has decreased the number of DWI arrests, youth suicides, marijuana use, crime, and alcohol consumption by youth.

What this data does not take into account (just to hit the highlights): (a) the decline in the birthrate after the decision of Roe v Wade that Stephen Levitt's Freakonomics proved was so significant that it materially lower urban crime rates [if there were fewer drivers, there would be fewer accidents]; or (b) that vastly improved automobile safety played a role in decreasing alcohol-related crash fatalities; or that (c) the studies in question only established a correlation and not a causal link between MLPA and "DWI arrests, youth suicides, marijuana use, crime, and alcohol consumption by youth." This period, for example, also saw the peak of the "War on Drugs," which had as a primary objective (you guessed it), the reduction of marijuana use among American youth.

My point is that CSPI is hardly objective, or thorough, or even-handed in pursuit of its ideological goals. Nor does it recognize the existence of valid counter-arguments to its own position.

What's interesting (and what CSPI will never tell you) is that the US is one of only a handful of countries in the world with a drinking age above 18. We're in company with Japan (20), India (18-25 depending on your state of residence), and Norway (18-20).

Which countries believe that 18-year-olds are competent citizens to make and be held accountable for their choices. Let's see: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany.... But I digress (or do I?).

Nor has the World Health Organization yet found a good correlation between minimum drinking age and alcoholism rates (and it hasn't been for lack of trying). There are other dynamics at work besides just minimum drinking age. For example, in Norway your first DWI will net you a mandatory 5-year license suspension.

But all that's really subsidiary to my primary concern: CSPI's blanket assertion of government's right to correct your behavior if it's not good for you. It's based on an inherent, overweening arrogance, that's more than apparent in this video in which Neil Cavuto confronts a CSPI representative over the organization's blatant attempt to launch a "slippery slope" global ban on soft drinks.



Here's my rule of thumb for any organization that wants to regulate or legislate in "the public interest": if their interest doesn't align with yours, then yours will first be denigrated as anti-social, then officially discouraged, then regulated, then outlawed.