Food for Thought

I've been listening to Anne Dowsett Johnston's, Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol. In one chapter, she talks about the makers and marketers of alcohol and how they target specific groups. If you do the math, it's pretty easy to figure out that these companies actually depend on people who drink alcoholically to stay in business. This is a great article about the subject.

Key paragraph:

Indeed, advertising that encouraged only moderate drinking would be an economic failure. This becomes clear when you know that only 10 percent of the drinking-age population consumes over half of all alcoholic beverages sold. According to Robert Hammond, director of the Alcohol Research Information Service, if all 105 million drinkers of legal age consumed the official maximum "moderate" amount of alcohol - .99 ounces per day, the equivalent of about two drinks - the industry would suffer "a whopping 40 percent decrease in the sale of beer, wine and distilled spirits." 

But aren't they always asking us to drink responsibly?  What they really mean is, go ahead and get smashed, just don't drive or become violent and injure someone.