Alcohol industry braces for bad news

WASHINGTON -- Even before its release, a report on teen drinking has drawn charges of bias from the $110 billion-a-year alcohol industry, an intense lobbying campaign, and congressional warnings not to interfere with the industry's marketing.

The pending report,

by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, will assess current efforts to control underage drinking and propose some new ones.

It is expected to weigh, among other things, what additional taxes on alcohol and restrictions on advertising and marketing might do to teen drinking.

Studies indicate that underage drinking, especially binge drinking, is a persistent problem, and that illegal consumption of liquor may account for between 10 and 20 percent of total U.S. sales.

Activists fighting underage drinking hope -- and some in the alcohol industry worry -- that the report will spur aggressive anti-alcohol initiatives similar to anti-smoking campaigns.

The report, originally due out last month, is being reviewed by independent outside experts. Release is now expected in August or September.

Some industry groups say the NAS panel dismissed their input and ignored their members' programs to reduce teen drinking.

"Our industry probably spends tens of millions of dollars fighting underage drinking. We really try to get parents and educators involved. Those are proven methods that have worked," said Michelle Semones, a spokesperson for the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

The NAS report, she said, is focused instead on unproven tactics like raising taxes on alcohol.

The Beer Wholesalers -- prominent in conservative Republican circles since the party's take-over of the House of Representatives in 1994 -- recently sponsored a letter to National Academy president Dr. Bruce Alberts signed by 134 lawmakers. The letter warned them against using the report to recommend "changes intended to adversely affect the beverage industry."

It cautioned specifically against any use of the report "to buttress new and untested theories to reduce illegal consumption."

A spokesman for the National Academy said Alberts had responded, assuring the lawmakers that the panel would proceed with integrity and that its findings would be subjected to outside peer review.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, had earlier taken the unprecedented step of asking the Institute of Medicine to include industry and advocacy groups as peer reviewers.

Senate Appropriations Committee members who control the Substance Abuse unit's purse strings protested. SAMHSA, they wrote, "should not recommend the involvement of groups with potential conflicts of interest in the peer review process."