Posted 9:39 PM by Floyd

Advocates of the nanny state often use children to push their agenda of control. Usually this is presented as "For the Children", which Juan Gato has mockingly trademarked. There is an especially obnoxious subspecies which one might call "For the Children Nearby." Here is an example from the San Jose Mercury News opinion page, by a Jane Eisner of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I may not be the best arbiter of cool, but this sure seems cool to me: A lithe, laughing young woman wearing a pair of low-slung jeans and what looks like a black bra is pouring drops of liquid on her bare belly. A lucky young man is licking them up, tongue prominently on her skin.

``Vegetarian by day,'' says the magazine advertisement. ``Bacardi by night.''

Now, I'm not an advertising genius, either, but of this I am also sure: With that message, Bacardi isn't looking to get my business. I don't dress like that and, at this stage in my life, don't even wish to. Nor do I generally read Rolling Stone, where this ad appeared last year.

Yet more than 4 million people who cannot legally drink in this country do read that magazine, comprising 35 percent of its audience, and only the blind or the foolish would argue that this sexy scene escaped their attention.

Correction: The blind, the foolish and the liquor industry. The industry, which gets to regulate itself on this matter, claims that it is doing a fine job ensuring that alcohol advertising does not appeal to underage individuals, and it managed to get the Federal Trade Commission to agree.

David H. Jernigan knows otherwise. As research director for the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, he's just published a comprehensive study that shows how underage youth are actually seeing more magazine ads for beer and distilled liquor than are people of legal drinking age. Using the demographic data employed by marketing strategists, CAMY analyzed what ads appear where and found a dismaying proportion in magazines with high youth readership.

``Bacardi by Night'' is hardly the only example. Jim Beam pushed its ``Real friends. Real bourbon'' campaign featuring what looks like a high school football team in Maxim (underage audience: 28 percent). Absolut Vodka hawked itself in last month's Vibe (41 percent). And Heineken even appropriated a Nintendo game controller to promote its product.

This attempt to entice ever-younger drinkers comes despite the huge social cost of drinking. Alcohol plays a substantial role in the four leading causes of death for young people: car wrecks, suicides, homicides and accidents. And research shows that kids who start drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to become alcoholics by the time they're 21.

The wine industry has managed to place most of its magazine advertising in publications read by only a sliver of the underage population. As Jernigan says, that proves it's possible to reach an adult audience without overexposing youth.

Unless this advertising is banned altogether -- which raises troubling First Amendment questions -- some spillover to younger audiences is inevitable. But the industry's current voluntary code is as squishy as beer-filled paper cups at a frat party. It asks only that advertising not appear in publications in which more than half the readers are under 21.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants to restrict such marketing to underage audiences of less than 10 percent. Jernigan thinks 15.8 percent is appropriate -- to correspond with the percentage of the general population aged 12 to 20.

Even the FTC, in its 1999 review, suggested that the industry move to a 25 percent standard. According to CAMY's study, that expectation is being violated big time: Almost one-third of all alcohol advertising dollars are being spent in 10 magazines with at least one-fourth of the readers under 21. Clearly, the FTC has to encourage the industry to revisit this issue.

``It's all about the beer,'' brags the Heineken ad. It sure is.

Eisner and her ilk want to create the a magical world where no person under the age of 21 will ever be exposed to advertising for an alcoholic beverage, kind of like the "boy in a bubble" concept of two decades back. Because children live in an adult environment, and imitate adults -- that being their job -- it is just as impractical to insulate the young from alcohol advertising as it is from any microorganism. Trying to prevent youth exposure to adult drugs is to effectively prevent all advertising and public consumption; I am cynical enough to believe that this is what Eisner and company are really after.

Consider the immense burden she seeks to place on the publications she named: Maxim, Vibe, Rolling Stone. Eisner purses her lips when she relates that these magazines are self-regulating. My blog is also self-regulating, Judy. I can give you a list of countries to move to if you don't like that. Not only does Eisner hate freedom of speech, she also hates it when someone makes a buck. Eisner doesn't seem to appreciate why these magazines are advertising for Jim Beam and Absolut: Because advertising pays their bills.

Eisner quotes a bunch of statistics on how many of various publicationss readers are underage. These figures are a joke. No publisher can possibly have any more than a vague idea on how many of its readers are in a certain age group. They can't do any statistically significant polling of their subscribers, because most subscribers wouldn't bother reporting their ages. And what of newstand sales? I don't know what's happening on Planet Eisner, but when I go into Borders to buy a magazine I never see the sales clerk attempt to guess my age and make a tally mark. All that CAMY or anyone else can do is to make an educated guess.

I don't know what is more ridiculous: The idea that companies like Jim Beam and Maxim should cease their entirely legitimate activities, based on statistics pulled out of some busybody's ass -- or that Eisner, MADD, and the FTC thinks there is some way to write a magazine that appeals to people who are 21, but not to those one year younger.