MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is a classic example of an organization which has departed so far from its original purpose that it ought to be renamed. Whether this is because of success in the war against drunk driving, or whether MADD has simply succumbed to ideologically driven activists with a neo-prohibitionist agenda I do not know, but the MADD outfit is getting so ridiculous that at the rate they're going they should just drop one of the Ds and hire Alfred E. Newman as their publicist. (Needless to say, such meandering by MADD is not a new topic here.)

This latest stuff is almost that funny. I stumbled onto something a few days ago to which I'll return, but I'll start with the MADD's campaign against virtual drunken driving. Hmmm... Maybe that's drunken virtual driving?

Anyway, Glenn Reynolds linked this post by "Simon Scowl" about MADD's campaign against "Grand Theft Auto IV" -- a video game in which players can virtually drive virtually drunk (and of course virtually steal, virtually rob, virtually commit murder, etc.). It's the virtual drunken driving that bothers MADD; apparently they're not only against the real thing; they don't want pretending:

In the critically acclaimed open-world game, players have the choice of patronizing a bar and then attempting to drive drunk. While virtually under the influence, the screen becomes blurred and the controls are more difficult to use. Players also have the option of hailing a taxi or walking. The intoxication effects wear off after a few minutes in the game.

Retorts Simon Scowl,

Er... when you're sitting at home pretending to drive drunk in a video game, you're not out driving drunk. You probably haven't even left the house for days. You are a menace to nobody but yourself.

Hmm....

Maybe instead of subtracting the D, MADD could add a D. MADDD. "Mothers Against Dry Drunken Driving." (I kind of like the 3D effect.)

Except they're against much more than that. The latest thing I stumbled onto was their campaign against alcoholic beverages which have the same alcohol content as beer, but which taste sweet. Like many bloggers, I was simply outraged by the story of the father whose son was taken away from him because he mistook Mike's Hard Lemonade for ordinary Lemonade at a baseball game and bought one for his boy. For that mistake, his child was taken to an emergency room (nothing was wrong with him, of course) and the predictable forces of bureaucracy did their damnedest to mess up the family. Opined Amy Alkon, who blogged about the incident:

...the CPS nitwits actually put the kid in foster care. Meanwhile, there are probably hundreds of kids in Detroit, in foster care and out, direly in need of assistance.

My big wish? That there were a TV show to replicate the role of the town stocks in the Middle Ages, where "public servants" shown to have their heads planted halfway up their small intestine will not simply be rewarded with pay raises, pensions, and vacation time, but with the kind of reception they actually deserve.

At the time, I didn't feel motivated to write a post because I didn't have anything to say beyond my usual "yet another typical example of bureaucratic tyranny..."

But I know I've expressed that sentiment before. So maybe I could have said, "this is the worst bureaucratic outage I've seen since the last bureaucratic outrage!" But that would have been so typical of me, and I didn't say anything because I really didn't have anything to add.

However, I pondered what might explain the bizarre nature of the bureaucratic overreaction, so I decided to research the product itself -- Mike's Hard Lemonade. It has a bad rep, not because it's inherently bad, for it has the same percentage of alcohol as beer. Rather, the problem is that it's sweet, and the anti-alcohol bureaucratic community doesn't like that. It's in a group of beverages they refer to collectively as "alcopops." These are said to be "gateway drugs" (no, really) simply because they taste good, and because they taste good, they appeal to young people, especially girls. (Who are for reasons unclear to me deemed more in need of protection than boys.) Seriously, they're being called "girlie drinks" and "kiddie booze."

More at Slashfood; Wiki entry here.

Whether bureaucratic antipathy to "kiddie booze" was a factor in snatching the man's son away from him I don't know. But I hadn't known about the major campaign against these beverages nor had I known that one of the sponsors is MADD. Not because "alcopops" are any more likely to cause auto accidents than beer or wine (like beer, they're around 5% alcohol, which is why they're classified as beers for tax purposes), but because they are said to "target" the young.

Exciting developments are under way across the nation to reclassify sugary, sweet alcopops, or flavored malt beverages, from their current beer tax classification to a more appropriate distilled spirit tax classification. Success in this reclassification effort will help prevent youth access to these soda-pop tasting, alcohol-laden beverages is because taxing them at a higher rate will make them less affordable to youth. Success will also result in removing them from shelves of thousands of retail outlets.

In California alone, alcopops are available in an almost 15,000 additional outlets due to its beer misclassification. And the state is losing an estimated $40 million in tax revenue that would be gained from proper classification. So the California Coalition on Alcopops and Youth, which includes groups such as MADD-California, the Girl Scout Councils of California, and Friday Night Live Partnership, took action. With a major campaign reaching every branch of government, this Coalition has enjoyed great recent success. Leading the way, four young people from California Friday Night Live Partnership and California Youth Council filed a petition with the State taxing agency, the Board of Equalization, requesting reclassification. After the testimony of youth leaders at a hearing this past December, the Board of Equalization voted 3-2 to reconsider the current classification. This decision generated statewide media coverage and led to an interview with Elliana Yanger and Jimmy Jordan on NPR's All Things Considered.

Another development is under way in the California courts. On Nov. 15, 2006, Santa Clara County filed a lawsuit against the Board of Equalization for the misclassification of alcopops as beer instead of distilled spirits. In support of the Coalition's efforts, the case was taken on a pro-bono basis by the San Francisco law firm of Renne, Sloan, Holtzman & Sakai.

The anti-alcopop crusaders make the "public policy" argument that the sweet beverages should be taxed at the same rate as distilled spirits:

By classifying alcopops as beer rather than distilled spirits, marketers can make the products cheaper and more available, critical factors in marketing to young people. In California, beer is taxed at much lower rates than distilled spirits - 20 cents a gallon for beer compared to $3.30 a gallon for distilled spirits. Experts believe that imposing the proper tax rate would raise the price substantially and, thereby, reduce alcopops' appeal to young people. This beer classification is also costing California tax payers an estimated $40 million in state taxes each year.[3]

Obviously, nothing would stop anyone from buying vodka and lemonade or tequila and Margarita Mix, putting the two together, and ending up with the same thing as "alcopop." The campaign accomplishes nothing. What's the next step, once the dimwits realize this? Preventing distilled spirits and mixers from being sold in the same stores? Or maybe ban alcohol altogether?

The reason there's a war against these beverages because they have sugar, and they're supposed to taste good. Sweetness has evolved from being an issue of taste into an issue of morality.

I should point out that I prefer bitter to sweet, and thus beer to "alcopops." Does that make me a more moral person? Or is sweetness more immoral because girls like sweet things? Can someone maybe explain? Because, the more I look at this the more confused I become.

Some time ago, Reason's Jacob Sullum analyzed the "alcopops" issue, and pointed out the illogic of the taxation argument:

...the rationale for taxing liquor at a higher rate than fermented beverages such as beer and wine is that liquor has a higher alcohol content, usually around 40 percent. The "alcopops," by contrast, generally have an alcohol content of around 5 percent. So if the Board of Equalization's tax hike plan is implemented as advertised (i.e., limited to "alcopops"), California will be taxing drinks with a 5 percent alcohol content at a much higher rate than beer, which can have an alcohol content twice as high, or wine, with an alcohol content up to three times as high. Putting aside the question of whether this is good public policy, it is clearly contrary to the legislature's intent in distinguishing between fermented and distilled alcoholic beverages. If critics of "alcopops" want to tax the hell out of sweet, flavored malt beverages, they should ask the legislature to do so, instead of reinterpreting the law to fit their agenda.

Beer is without question, like Pizza, Madonna, and fast cars, an icon of modern American culture. That the white working class American male is stereotypically referred to as "Joe Six-pack" is but one example of the dominance of beer as lower and middle-class America's preferred alcoholic beverage. But this was not always the case. 150 years ago, in the 1840s, hard cider held the position now held by beer as the preferred alcoholic beverage of the working class.

But somehow, by the end of the 19th century and well before Prohibition, Cider all but disappeared in the United States. That hard cider remains popular in all the other outposts of British culture, that apples are still a major American crop, and that every other alcoholic drink once popular in America came back after prohibition make the question of cider's disappearance all the more perplexing.

Order a glass of hard cider in an American bar today, and the bartender might look at you strangely. The only hard ciders to be found are relatively expensive English imports like Bulmer's and Woodpecker's. So foreign has this drink become that most Americans have never even tasted it. While hard cider remains a favorite draught beverage at most British pubs and is still consumed in large quantities in Canada, Australia, and its country of origin, France, descendants of anglo-culture in the United States, and only in the United States, no longer know what hard cider is.

Had hard cider never been produced in the U.S., for whatever reason, then this might not seem such an oddity. But what makes this particularly problematic is that hard cider was not only widely produced and consumed in the U.S. but held a place of high esteem on American tables and in American taverns well into the
19th century. Perhaps the height of cider's popularity came in the election campaign of 1840 when the conservative Whig candidate, William Harrison, managed to convince a majority of working class Americans that he was one of them by associating himself with the symbols of "log cabin and hard cider."

However, it's worth noting that cider was very popular among the founding fathers ("In the early days of our nation, the founding fathers and mothers and their kids consumed hard cider by the gallon," and"to the end of John Adams's life, a large tankard of hard cider was his morning draught before breakfast"). Thomas Jefferson is said to have written much of the Declaration of Independence in a tavern.

Apple cider was so American that it really was more American than apple pie, as well as in the classical tradition (something I cannot ignore -- hence the longish quote):

....Thanks to the Romans, and all of their conquering, apples were spread around the world - leaving not only a tasty little fruit, but yet another convenient way to produce alcohol. Orchards really began to flourish in Europe during the Medieval Days, when those keen little monks added this to their long list of resources for food and alcohol production. The same could be said for the early European settlers. When they first came to North America, apples seemed a better use for alcohol production than anything else. So, "as American as apple pie" should read more like "as American as hard cider". The colonials also embraced hard cider, as not only was it easier to produce than beer or wine, but it was quite the cost effective way to make their hooch.

Back around 1625, William Blackstone sowed the seeds for what was perhaps the very first American orchard, placed close to Beacon Hill. William Endicott, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, was a distinguished orchardist as was George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. As far as Johnny Appleseed goes, he was probably partaking of the hard cider rather than thinking of people baking apple pies. Cider was held in high regard right up to the end of the 1800's, but its appeal soon fluttered. Maybe it was the Industrial revolution giving the working class the thirst for light lagers? Prohibition? Or could it have been an aggressive attack from the budding soft drink industry and the likes of Coca-Cola? Hey add a little cocaine to soda and voila! ... a nice refreshing beverage without the alcohol, but still packing a kick.

So where has this pride and history of hard cider gone after Prohibition? Where's cider now? Most ciders produced today have an addition of sulfites and perhaps other preservatives. Sugar and apple juice concentrate are often used as well as natural or artificial colourings. Most are far from being what they used to be, traditionally. And, it seems like the cider industry has become more of a rat race rather than a craft niche market and one of quality. In the 1980's imported English and French cider made their way to America to appease the changing tastes, spawned by the beginning of the micro-beer revolution. By the 1990's racy marketing and gimmick on top of gimmick showed that the cider industry could get as shallow as the macro-beer industry. Of course it does not help when you have the hard lemon, hard tea, alcoholic water, and now hard cola side of the beverage industry chipping away at your sales. But still, cider's stem remains attached ... waiting to ripen and hit the industry on the head.

Domestic Brands

Cider Jack Hard Cider, this whole entire brand of syrupy sweet hard ciders has a tap handle everywhere. Racy marketing and an aim towards drinkers with a sweet tooth have done well for them. Brands include Hard Cider (5.5% alcohol by volume), Raspberry Hard Cider and Cranberry Hard Cider (both 5.0% alcohol by volume).

Hardcore Hard Cider is the Boston Beer Company's venture called Hardcore Cider Company that is based in Ohio. Hardcore Crisp Hard Cider is oak aged to add at little depth and character to be closer to traditional ciders, their Hardcore Golden Hard Cider is lighter and more on the lines of a present day cider.

The Woodchuck Cider brand has been around since the 1980's as The Joseph Cerniglia Winery.

I don't know what's egregious; the fact that the favorite drink of the founding fathers was alcopop, or that imaginary drinkers can get behind imaginary wheels.

Or maybe they're real wheels?

I visited a friend the other day who has the Wii game, and his latest accessory is -- I kid you not -- a steering wheel!

I looked carefully, but I saw no warning label against drinking (either real or imaginary) behind that wheel. Anyone could drink and drive -- especially children! Factor in alcopops, and you've got children -- especially helpless girls -- drinking and driving! They could even take turns engaging in contests to see who's the best drunken driver.

It's terrible.

Why, it's almost as bad as Thomas Jefferson's drinking and writing...