A much-anticipated report on underage drinking, released this week, called for cooperation between the alcohol industry, health organizations, governments, parents, and others to combat what the authors called the nation's biggest youth drug problem.

However, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report also called for raising excise taxes on alcohol to discourage drinking, a recommendation that led some alcohol industry leaders to immediately try to torpedo the document.

The report by a panel of the NAS' National Research Council called for broad cooperation on a wide range of measures, including beefed-up compliance checks of alcohol servers and vendors, mandatory server training, improved ID cards, age verification for Internet alcohol sales, and a national media campaign targeting underage alcohol use.

Moreover, the panel called on the alcohol industry to reform its voluntary advertising codes, saying that "a substantial portion of alcohol advertising reaches an underage audience or is presented in a style that is attractive to youth." The group also called on the industry to fund an independent, nonprofit foundation to prevent underage drinking, rather than funding its own, untested prevention messages.

The recommendations were broadly praised by health and addiction organizations. "The NAS recommendations should be adopted because there is strong research evidence to show that they will save lives," said David Rosenbloom, director of Join Together. "The only opposition will come from the beer manufacturers and dealers because they also know that the proposals will reduce the underage drinking that bloats their profits."

"The report gives national and state policy makers a clear choice -- beer industry profits or teen lives and health," added Rosenbloom.

George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, called for Congress to act swiftly on the recommendations. "Federal anti-drug strategy virtually ignores underage drinking and leaves the booze industry with a near monopoly as the primary educator of young people about alcohol," he said. "We hope Congress takes the Academy's recommendations to heart and moves forward with a massive, hard-hitting media campaign that begins educating America's kids and families about the dangers of underage drinking."

J. Edward Hill, M.D., a trustee of the American Medical Association, echoed the panel's call for a broad coalition to combat underage drinking, including the alcohol industry. "This study provides a blueprint for a comprehensive, national plan to combat underage drinking, which is turning into an epidemic among our nation's youth. We need to use all the tools and resources available to help our nation's youth abstain from drinking," Hill said.

"Erroneous Conclusions" and "Woefully Misguided"

Some industry representatives were decidedly cool to the panel's recommendations, however.

"The NAS Panel relied on a compilation of existing information, much of which contained erroneous conclusions, as the background for their report," said Beer Institute President Jeff Becker. "Given this, we are not surprised to see misguided recommendations such as raising beer excise taxes. Experience has shown that the only clear results from increasing beer excise taxes are higher unemployment and higher prices for responsible adults -- such measures do nothing to lower teen drinking."

Becker called proposals for new federal spending on underage drinking programs "woefully misguided," saying that "governments at all levels already spend billions of dollars on programs designed to address illegal underage drinking, alcohol and substance abuse. And the fact of the matter is that underage drinking over the last few years has decreased -- not increased."

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) also denounced calls for higher alcohol taxes, but said it was "pleased the NAS report underscored that parents and adults need to be the primary target of any campaign to reduce underage drinking."

"The distilled spirits industry has long held this view and has been providing educational materials for parents, educators and role models for over a decade," said DISCUS President Peter Cressey.

At the same time, however, DISCUS announced that it would change its voluntary Code of Responsible Practices to prohibit members from advertising in publications that have less than 70 percent adult readership. Previously, the industry code called for advertising only in publications with a 51 percent or greater adult readership.

DISCUS also promised to establish an external review board to review ads voluntarily submitted by industry members, apply its code to all products sold by DISCUS members, not just distilled spirits, and issue public reports on complaints about advertising and the steps taken to address them.

Timing of Release Raises Suspicions

Alcohol industry groups, along with their allies in Congress and the Bush administration, actively worked to derail or discredit the NAS report before it was released (see Despite Industry Attacks, Report on Underage Drinking Expected Soon -- Ed.)

Ultimately, the release of the report was delayed. Interestingly, the NAS report was finally unveiled on the same day that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report citing improvements in the alcohol industry's attempts at self-regulation.

According to the FTC, which looked specifically at advertising of so-called "malternative" beverages to youth, "The report's analysis indicates significant improvement in standards for the placement of alcohol ads, as well as improvement in the adoption of external advertising review mechanisms. The report also found no evidence of targeting underage consumers in [this] market."

The FTC cited the improvements in DISCUS advertising code -- apparently negotiated with the agency prior to being disclosed to the public this week -- as one example of the industry's progress on self-regulation.

DISCUS's Cressey said the FTC report "is clearly recognition of our industry's commitment to responsible advertising and marketing. The key provisions of our Code -- particularly the 70-percent adult demographic -- represent highly responsible standards that provide reasonable exercise of First Amendment Rights."

The National Academy of Sciences report and supporting materials are available on the NAS website.