Even in a modern era, the possibility of prohibiting alcohol consumption still whets activists' appetites

I think this would be a good time for a beer." So said President Franklin D. Roosevelt upon repeal of the 18th Amendment, which enforced Prohibition for 14 long years. In 1933 the 21st Amendment was ratified by two-thirds of the states, ending Prohibition nationwide.

Prohibition has passed into history, but a subtler and more insidious movement now is using a back-door approach to delegitimize social drinking. Some people call it "Prohibition drip by drip."

The movement is eerily similar to the one that gave us Prohibition. Like the early 20th-century organized effort, it is well integrated, it is self-righteous and it has sympathetic ears in the media. And when one considers that nearly all of its supporters seem to be bankrolled in some way by the $8 billion Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, or RWJF, it's even better funded than its pre-Jazz Age forebear.

The RWJF has contributed more than $265 million over five years to notable anti-alcohol organizations, which have used that money to fund "studies," seminars, media campaigns and community outreach programs that attack adult beverage consumption in various ways. Those multimillion-dollar checks have financed an army of like-minded advocacy, activist, grassroots and "research" organizations -all aimed at reducing even responsible consumption.

The collective result is a simultaneous, multipronged offensive on the way adult beverages are perceived, distributed, sold and consumed. The assault is designed not to address product abuse but simply to get everyone to drink less.

At the recent "Alcohol Policy Conference XIII," a modern prohibitionist conference underwritten by the RWJF, activists endorsed an alcohol-rationing system, whereby government limits the quantity of alcohol each individual may consume. They also supported a government monopoly on adult beverage distribution, a total advertising ban and zoning ordinances to restrict the number and location of "alcohol outlets," which, astonishingly, they define to include family restaurants.

Anti-alcohol organizations justify those draconian measures with a number of RWJF-funded "studies" that bizarrely--and incorrectly--conclude that alcohol abuse is endemic. Moreover, those reports are nearly unanimous in their calls for everyone to reduce their consumption of adult beverages in order to address underage drinking.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, which gets millions from the RWJF, is at the forefront of the movement to marginalize social drinking by terrorizing responsible adults who dare to have a drink while they are dining out. This campaign results from a subtle but significant shift in MADD's strategy in the last few years.

With the battle against drunk driving reduced to what a past MADD president called "a hard core of alcoholics," MADD shifted its strategy to target any adult who drinks--no matter how responsibly--before driving by calling for mandatory nationwide roadblocks to get people "to drink less." MADD has abandoned its mission of fighting drunk driving and adopted one of frightening and harassing responsible adults.

Recently, a National Academy of Sciences, or NAS, panel, commissioned by Congress to find strategies to reduce underage drinking, ignored its congressional mandate and instead presented policies designed to reduce the level of adult consumption of adult beverages. "Efforts to reduce underage drinking," they wrote, "need to focus on adults."

After 15 months and $500,000 in taxpayer funds, the panel endorsed such latter-day Prohibitionist policies as higher alcohol taxes; mandatory road-blocks; zoning restrictions for restaurants, taverns and liquor stores; state-mandated anti-alcohol server training; and a national anti-alcohol public-relations campaign.

The NAS panel's decision to target the 100 million American adults who drink responsibly under the guise of addressing underage consumption is hardly surprising, given the association of so many of the panelists with the RWJF. Eight of the 12 panelists have professional ties to the foundation. Seven panelists, outside of their role on the panel, publicly endorsed higher taxes of other restrictions on adult beverages.

The panelists include a RWJF consultant who has stated that alcohol companies are "killing us softly." Another panelist, who has received up to $275,000 in RWJF funds, is on record as claiming, "Current [alcohol] excise taxes are too low, both nationally and in every state." Yet another panelist --also a recipient of RWJF largesse--has run ads comparing beer to heroin and other illegal drugs.

In many ways the NAS roadmap to Prohibition can be viewed as the cumulative result of millions of dollars of expenditures and years of work by the RWJF.

Writing at the close of the failed experiment in Prohibition, its great critic H.L. Mencken explained its unintended consequences. "There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more," he wrote. "There is not less crime, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for the law has not increased, but diminished."

The modern prohibitionists are targeting what Mencken called the "honest, law-abiding, well-meaning citizen." Only time will tell if they, like their predecessors, will succeed in making it "impossible to take a harmless drink, cheaply and in a decent manner."

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors and management at Nation's Retaurant News.

John Doyle is executive director of the American Beverage Institute, a Washington, D. C.-based restaurant trade association. To learn more, visit www.AmericanBeverageInstitute.com.

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