Agencies, parents combat teen drinking

According to Larry Lunt, chairman of the Utah state agency monitoring alcohol sales, a new law cracking down on sales to young people has increased compliance from 66 percent to 88 percent. Says Lunt: "We used to say 'reducing underage drinking in Utah,' but the new motto is 'eliminating underage drinking in Utah."'

Meanwhile, California is considering action against a product that critic Dr. Jim Kooler describes as "an insidious strategy to get teens comfortable with alcohol." The products, under labels like Smirnoff Ice, Mike's Hard Lemonade, Bacardi Silver and Zima, are flavored alcoholic beverages that the New York Times says look and taste like soda, "but offer the kick of a cocktail." Kooler heads a state-sponsored group that promotes healthy lifestyles for teenagers. He wants California to adopt stricter rules for drinks that contain distilled spirits but are sold and taxed as beer. The Times says that if the products were taxed as hard liquor, the tax would jump from 20 cents a gallon to $3.30 a gallon. Maine has reclassified these drinks, known as alcopops and flavored malt beverages, making them more expensive and difficult to buy. Arkansas, Illinois and Nebraska are considering similar proposals. In California, such reclassification is opposed by small-business owners and industry groups.

Gary Galanis, a spokesman for the big alcohol maker Diageo, told the Times that flavored malt beverages are roughly as potent as beer. The drinks, he argued, come from brewing, not distilling, and the alcohol stems from added flavoring, not hard liquor. But attorney Jim Mosher, who studies underage drinking, says "if beer has alcohol in it, it's a distilled spirit."

Galanis says the real problem with underage drinking is not alcopops, but alcohol. The numbers, he says, show that underage drinkers get the alcohol from siblings over 21 or parents. From oddly different viewpoints, this spokesman for the alcohol industry agrees with organizations like ParentsEmpowered.org that what parents and families do may hold the key to combating underage drinking.

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John Hughes teaches journalism at Brigham Young University. He is a former editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News and a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, which syndicates this column.