Hold the Horses!
By Rob Lillis
(Originally appeared in Voice – Messenger Post Newspapers – March 7, 2012)
One of the best protections for consumers is accurate information with which to make choices. In the 1960s, Ralph exposed the lack of safety concerns in the automobile industry. It took several decades of consumer education and government regulations but car makers went from advertising that appealed only to consumers’ desire for styling and performance to marketing safety advances. In the time I sat writing this article with the TV on in the background, I saw an ad for one automaker touting the highest Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test scores and another bragging about vehicles equipped with eight airbags.
Each year the television broadcast of the Superbowl is highlighted by the introduction of new, clever, humorous and very expensive ads mostly for beer or junk foods. The producers of these products know that if you can laugh at an ad, in essence share a laugh with them, or if the ad gives you “warm fuzzies,” you probably won’t see through the deception of linking their product to fun, athletics, sexual prowess or patriotism.
Anheuser Busch, the foreign owned, “Great American” Beer Company introduced and is continuing to run an ad showing Americans in all walks of life celebrating repeal of prohibition with all the enthusiasm they mustered for the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII. The tag line at the end of the ad reads, “Anheuser Busch, delivering good times since 1876.”
The vast majority of Americans will not hesitate to agree that prohibition was a failure. Of course the vast majority of Americans base that opinion on the image of prohibition projected in Jimmy Cagney movies, the Untouchables (movie or TV series) and the propaganda disseminated by the alcohol industry. But hold those horses (Clydesdales) and let’s look at a few facts. Prohibition was enacted for moral reasons at the urging of the religious temperance movement. Any such law is ill conceived. However, the public health impact was dramatic. The majority of Americans did not drink during prohibition. As a result, cirrhosis deaths declined by over two thirds. Motor vehicle deaths also declined dramatically.
What Anheuser Busch neglected to mention in their ad was the collateral damage that resulted from repeal of prohibition. Every year, 35,000 Americans die from cirrhosis or alcohol liver disease. Another 10,000 die in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol impaired drivers. Half of all murders and half all suicide deaths are related to alcohol consumption. Deaths due to alcohol are just the tip of the iceberg. One recent study estimates that excessive alcohol consumption costs Americans nearly $225 billion annually. Most of that cost is borne by all of us as healthcare costs paid by our shared medical insurance or public healthcare coverage. Law enforcement and criminal justice costs associated with alcohol related crime are estimated at more than $21 billion. These figures fail to fully portray the human cost of alcohol related problems such as birth defects, domestic violence, divorce, job loss and academic failure.
So before you celebrate the repeal of prohibition, with the indispensable help of Anheuser Busch, hold the horses, even the Clydesdales, and think about the cost of that move. Then make an informed choice about the safety of this product.
