Fighting the good fight

Modern Brewery Age, March 16, 1992

MBA: In your view, what makes a unified program more effective than individual efforts?

JG: Well, I think that in order for the licensed beverage industry to respond to accusations by anti-alcohol groups, it is necessary for brewers, distillers and vintners to demonstrate that they care about the abuse and misuse of their products and they are opposed to such misuse and abuse.

To get that message across, they need credibility. In order to achieve credibility, you not only have to do good works, but as much as possible, you have to be united.

That's an opinion. Certainly the Century Council is moving along in its attempts to combat abuse and misuse of licensed beverages, specifically combating drunken driving and sales to minors.

I'm persuaded, from my conversations with decision-makers and policy makers - governors, senators and congressmen - that we are developing credibility. I hope so, because we're certainly honest in our attempts to try to do some good work.

MBA: You seem to have many small wineries among your subscribers. Have you made any serious attempt to recruit any of the 250 microbreweries around the country?

JG: We're doing that now. As we speak, we're starting to do that. You know, we only announced this organization last May. We've already set up, not just the Front Lines campaign, but the cities programs, the community programs. We have a program with the national league of cities as well, which I'm sure you're informed about, with the U.S. conference of mayors. We are working for administrative license revocation laws in the 21 states that don't have them. Parenthetically, there have been some accusations, I understand, that administrative license revocation laws, reduce sales of beverage alcohol. We don't believe that's the case. And, the important thing, is to reduce alcohol-related casualties on the highway.

But anyway, administrative license revocation has not impacted negatively on sales, according to the statistics we have received. I think that's important to understand, because we're working for those laws to be passed in states that don't have them.

We have picked up in California, a program that was formerly funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety, called "If you drink don't drive." It's aimed at Hispanics in the state, and we hope to expand it to other states with large Hispanic populations. Last year, there were 366,000 drunk driving arrests in California. Thirty-eight percent were Hispanic. The Hispanic population in California is half that, somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. So you can see there is a very strong need for that program.

We also picked up the U.S. Conference of Mayors program, which the NHTSA had been funding, until their funds ran out. We're very pleased with that.

We're working with other organizations in trying to pursue our programs. So far, I think we're being remarkably successful, considering that we're brand new.

And I should add, allegations to the contrary, we do not represent the entire licensed beverage industry in our list of subscribers. And we have never claimed to speak for the licensed beverage industry, or any one segment of that industry, because we're not a trade association. Let me point out, we don't think that we're better than the trade associations, but we're just different. We try to make that point constantly, in our literature, and in our talks with government officials.