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Congressional sponsors of
legislation to create a National Media Campaign to Prevent Underage Drinking
(H.R. 1509/S. 866) in the 107th Congress secured report language and
$500,000 in the FY2002 Labor HHS appropriations bill for a study by the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to develop a cost-effective national
strategy to prevent underage drinking.
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The origins of the study date back
several years to repeated Congressional attempts to establish a media
campaign to address underage alcohol use. The NAS formed a committee
of alcohol-prevention, communications, and public-health experts to conduct
the study, and convened a series of meetings last fall to solicit public and
expert input.
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Fearing that the report will
recommend remedies the industry strongly opposes, such as tax increases and
restrictions on advertising, the National Beer Wholesalers' Association (NBWA)
has aggressively sought to undermine the study and attack its credibility
even before the report's release. The brewers' attack included a
letter to the NAS director, signed by 134 members of Congress, essentially
warning the NAS/IOM against including any findings that would be detrimental
to the brewing industry.
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Alcohol (beer in particular) is by
far the number-one drug of choice for youth, and it kills six times more
young people than all illicit drugs combined.1 Yet, federal
efforts to prevent and reduce underage drinking have been sorely
under-funded, woefully fragmented, fundamentally invisible, and largely
ineffective.
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The federal government's efforts to
combat illicit drugs are backed by a well-funded, cohesive, publicly
articulated national drug-control strategy. That strategy is
coordinated by ONDCP, an executive-department agency that reports directly
to the President. Since the mid-1990s, Congress has appropriated
billions of dollars to that agency, including hundreds of millions of
dollars for a national youth anti-drug media campaign. Nothing
remotely resembling such a concerted effort has ever existed to address
underage drinking, or alcohol abuse.
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Numerous obstacles have thwarted the
creation of a comprehensive, highly focused, clearly identified, and
hard-hitting federal effort to address underage drinking.
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The NBWA lobbied extensively to
exclude alcohol messages from the Office of National Drug Control Policy's
billion-dollar Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. As a result, the
nation's largest and most visible tax-payer-funded youth anti-substance
abuse campaign maintains a virtual silence on America's number-one youth
drug problem.
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Congressional debate on whether to
include alcohol messages in the ONDCP campaign reflected strong support of
-- and recognition of the need for -- an underage drinking prevention
campaign to raise awareness of that problem and deliver prevention messages
to young people, parents, community leaders, and public health and safety
officials.
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Numerous members of Congress
recognized the incongruity of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to
prevent illicit drug use, while ignoring underage alcohol use, widely
recognized as the far more devastating, severe, and widespread drug problem
for young Americans.
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Report language in the FY 2002
Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill provided
$500,000 for the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine to
develop a strategy to reduce and prevent underage drinking.2
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The provision calling for the NAS
study derives from proposed legislation to establish a National Media
Campaign to Prevent Underage Drinking (H.R. 1509 and S. 866 in the 107th
Congress).3
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That legislation called for the
establishment of a discrete media campaign focused on preventing/reducing
underage drinking. The program would be housed in the Department of
Health and Human Services.
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A broad array of public health and
safety groups backed the bills, including the Center for Science in the
Public Interest (CSPI), the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug
Dependence (NCADD), Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), the
American Medical Association (AMA), Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD),
Consumer Federation of America, National Latino Council on Alcohol &
Tobacco, the Trauma Foundation, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as
well as the Advertising Council and the National Partnership for a Drug-Free
America. Countless local and statewide groups also supported the
measure. The bi-partisan bills garnered 82 co-sponsors in the House
and 18 in the Senate.
September 4, 2003
References
1. Grunbaum, J.A., Kann, L.,
Kinchen, S.A., Williams, B., Ross, J.G., Lowry, R. & Kolbe, L. (2002). Youth
risk behavior surveillance: United States, 2001. In: Surveillance
Summaries, June 28, 2002. MMWR 2002; 51(No. SS-4): 1–62.
Young, S.E., Corley, R.P., Stallings, M.C., Rhee, S.H., Crowley, T.J. &
Hewitt, J.K. (2002). Substance use, abuse and dependence in adolescence:
Prevalence, symptom profiles and correlates. Drug and Alcohol
Dependence. 68(3):309–322.
2. The language and funding
was included in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and
Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2002 (P.L. 107-116):
"The conference agreement includes
$500,000 for the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine
(NAS/IOM) to develop a cost-effective strategy for reducing and preventing
underage drinking. To help develop a cost-effective strategy for
reducing and preventing underage drinking, the NAS/IOM shall review existing
Federal, State and non-governmental programs, including media-based
programs, designed to change the attitudes and health behaviors of youth.
Based on its review, the NAS/IOM shall produce a strategy designed to
prevent and reduce underage drinking including: an outline and
implementation strategy, message points that will be effective in changing
the attitudes and health behaviors of youth concerning underage drinking,
target audience identification, goals and objectives of the campaign, and
the estimated costs of development and implementation."
3. Those bills, in relevant
part, direct the Secretary of HHS to:
"... develop and submit to the
Congress a comprehensive strategy that identifies the nature and extent of
the problem of underage drinking, the scientific basis for the strategy,
including a review of the existing scientific research, target audiences,
goals and objectives of the campaign, message points that will be effective
in changing attitudes and behavior, a campaign outline and implementation
plan, an evaluation plan, and the estimated costs of implementation."
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Related Links:
NAS Report Talking Points
August 2003
Washington Report
NAS Report
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Kim Miller, Manager of Federal Relations.
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