       Read latest- 2nd suit filed in California and read the 1st Class Action Youth focused Lawsuit filed in 11/03 in D.C. Many are asking why reports showing compliancy, and virtually no underage sales, differ so greatly from local law enforcement & communities are experiencing
Alcohol Awareness Month-HopeNetworks action '03
Video Interview
(Windows Media File)
Slidell Police Chief, and Underage Alcohol Problems. 4/17Video
New Orleans Health Sciences Press Release
Copy of our Hopenetworks petition from 2003 supporting closing the loophole allowing youth/college kids access to alcohol HopeNetworks 21 is 21 petition to support Legislation to reduce underage risks and alcohol Federal
Report Addressing the National Crisis with Underage Drinking
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Alcohol
News
February 15, 2004, by Diane Carman Everybody comes back to the fundamental problem sooner or later. At the University of Colorado, alcohol abuse is epidemic. A Harvard study on binge drinking found 58 percent of CU students admit to having gone on a four- or five-drink spree at least once in the previous two weeks. It's a significantly higher percentage than the national average for binge drinking among college students. That figure is 44 percent. In his book "Dying to Drink," Harvard professor Henry Wechsler talks of the influence of "big alcohol," with its aggressive marketing to students and the high density of bars and liquor stores surrounding college campuses. Perhaps nobody understands this better than Dick Tharp, CU athletic director and for many years a top corporate officer in Boulder's largest liquor store, Liquor Mart Inc. Liquor Mart is easy walking distance from campus and a major advertiser in the campus newspaper, the Colorado Daily. It offers 33,500 square feet of retail space. The company reported sales last year of $6.1 million. Tharp is Liquor Mart's treasurer. Robert Maust, chairman of the standing committee on substance abuse at CU, is aware of Tharp's relationship with Liquor Mart. "He was part-owner long before he became athletic director" in 1997, Maust said. Filings from the secretary of state's office show that Tharp was vice president of Liquor Mart in 1991. Through CU spokeswoman Pauline Hale, Tharp said Friday that the position is a matter of public record and has been fully disclosed. "They run a very fine store," Maust said. Among the policies he commended was the $100 bounty the company pays employees who catch customers using fake IDs. But Maust, the guy who's charged with the thankless, Herculean task of reducing alcohol abuse on campus, admitted that it's "always sort of an awkward topic." No joke. Tharp is a walking, talking symbol of our collective ambivalence about alcohol on campus. At the Feb. 6 CU regents meeting on the recruiting scandal, chancellor Richard Byyny, who presides over the campus where the basketball stadium is called the Coors Events Center, railed against the power of the liquor industry. "One
thing we're up against is the huge amounts of money spent by the alcohol industry" for marketing to college students, he said. "We don't have the money to be able to counter that." Instead the university relies on peer counselors and quaint interactive theater programs to try to get through to students. But it takes one heck of an amateur skit to counter nonstop commercial messages from the Coors Light Twins, the Molson bear and Budweiser's Cedric the Entertainer. Anybody who watches sports on TV sees hours of beer commercials every week. But on college campuses - home to "ladies' nights," trivia nights, $5 pitchers, 24-ounce margaritas and endless drink promotions at every street-corner bar - big alcohol's drumbeat is even more relentless. The Harvard research also documents the direct relationship between universities and the alcohol industry. Universities depend on the industry for contributions to subsidize programs and athletics facilities, Wechsler says, while at the same time struggling to cope with the problems caused by widespread binge drinking.
Wechsler estimates that 80 percent of college athletes drink, 75 percent of fraternity and sorority members are binge drinkers and that 1,400 college students die each year of complications from alcohol abuse. And nowhere is that unhealthy relationship between colleges and big alcohol more apparent than in the football programs. It works like this: TV contracts finance college football. Beer commercials pay for football on TV. And it's a safe bet that the fans in the stadiums, sports bars and anyplac> e where there's both a TV and a refrigerator eagerly do their part to make that co-dependent relationship hugely profitable. Face it, without beer, there would be no football. Not true, you say? OK, without beer, football would be like swimming. Good exercise. Maust said Boulder is "a much more aggressive marketplace" for big alcohol than most other Colorado cities. To give you some idea just how aggressive, he noted, "We have 225 alcohol
outlets and 25 pharmacies in town to serve the same population." And it's hard to imagine any of the 224 other alcohol outlets in town could rival the Liquor Mart in size and volume. In this way, Tharp's dual careers are hardly inconsistent. In fact, being a university athletic director and a co-owner of the biggest liquor store in town is nothing short of brilliant. Tharp is a clever businessman who understands the cunning wisdom of controlling both supply and demand. Like they say on Wall Street, on Madison Avenue and at Folsom Field, scruples are for suckers. Greed is good.
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