 Thank you everybody. I'm Paul Glastress. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Washington Monthly magazine. And I'm delighted to be here. I want to thank Barry Lynn at the New America Foundation for partnering with us. And we've done a lot of work together and a lot more to come on this broader issue of industry consolidation and its effects on the American culture and political economy. The first half of our program today was focused on the beer and liquor industry and the effects of consolidation on the market. The second half we're going to be talking about the effects of that consolidation on American society and culture. And we've got a great panel to do that. The conversation is going to be built around a terrific piece in the current issue of the Washington Monthly. I hope you all pick up a copy either on your way out or you have one by Tim Heffernan, our first panelist. Tim is an independent journalist based in New York reporting for the Atlantic, popular mechanics, Bloomberg and others. He's a former editor of Esquire and writes about heavy industry in the natural world. His current interests include large-scale metals mining, ultramassive metals fabrication and the state of hunting in America. And so we'll be discussing Tim's article here today. And part of that discussion, we have three terrific individuals. Jerry Oliver is the former chief of police of Detroit and the former director of the Department of Liquor, License and Control in Arizona. He was hired as police chief of the notoriously crime-ridden city of Richmond, Virginia. But spectacularly, he had a spectacular success there. The city's homicide rate dropped from 164 homicides in 1994 to 72 in 2000. In his many years of service, Oliver has served as the assistant chief of police of his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, the director of drug policy in Memphis, Tennessee, the chief of police in three cities, Pasadena, Richmond and Detroit. And in 1996, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano appointed Oliver as director of the Department of Liquor, License and Control, which is responsible for nearly 11,000 licenses. Also on our panel, Dr. Thomas Baber, he is head of the Department of Community Medicine and Healthcare at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Dr. Baber, is it Baber or Baber? Either one. Either one, good. Dr. Baber spent several years researching at Harvard Medical School and he served as head of social science research at the McLean Hospital's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center in Belmont, Massachusetts. He has served as the scientific director at the Alcohol Research Center and he's also regional editor of the International Journal Addiction. Finally, we have with us Reverend Cynthia Abrams. She serves as the program director of alcohol, other addictions and healthcare for the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society. She was born and raised on or near the Chaturugas Reservation. Did I get that? Chaturagas. Chaturagas Reservation of the Seneca Indian Nation in Western New York State. She moved to California as an adult and a Bachelor of Arts degree at the California State at Long Beach and a Master's of Divinity at Claremont School of Theology from 1999 to 2003. She served as executive director of the National United Methodist Native American Center. On staff as a late person at the Native American UMC of Southern California, she administered the Church-sponsored Outreach Center for American Indian Substance Abusers in the city of Los Angeles. So we have a wide variety of expertise in the spiritual world and law enforcement and regulation and so we'll begin our discussion and I'm gonna ask Tim to tell us a little bit about his story, what he found and what he concluded. Tim? Well thank you for coming. I should say that I didn't realize I was gonna be giving introductory remarks so these are somewhat off the cuff but I'll do my best. As Paul said, I'm an independent journalist. I'm based in New York City and I do tend to focus on heavy industry and the natural world. About two weeks ago I was down in the bottom of the largest open pit mine in the world in the middle of a snowstorm so this is a somewhat different venue for me. Just to describe I guess how this story came about about eight months ago now, nine months ago a friend put me in touch with Barry Lynn here of the New America Foundation and Barry was looking for someone to research the state of consolidation in the American beer industry and how that consolidation would really affect society as a whole. My background is in economics actually and so I suppose my friend thought I was in a somewhat good position to do this sort of research and make the kind of analysis that was necessary. So I got the assignment and got to work. You've heard I guess an awful lot of what that research revealed in practical terms in terms of the actual sales and distribution and diversity of beer in this country from our earlier panelists. I think that they've covered those issues quite well. It was particularly gratifying for me to have Sam kind of confirm as somebody who actually is in the craft beer industry a lot of the concerns that we had about the way consolidation will affect the actual diversity and competitiveness within the beer market. But something that really is I think of even more overarching importance about the research that we did and the conclusions we came to is that this is not simply a question of open markets or free markets or simple kind of economic efficiencies. Anytime you set up a market of any sort it involves political questions and involves moral questions and involves questions of the effect that those markets are going to have on society to the extent that any market is regulated or delimited by law which is to say every single market to the extent that it's regulated by laws that we pass it also brings those moral and political issues into play. I suppose one conclusion or one thing I would like to point out from that is that the purpose of this article and really I think the purpose of this whole event is not to make an argument for the absolute unregulated free market nor is it to say that we have to regulate the alcohol market out of existence or so tightly that it's absolutely controlled from the top. It's rather to say that the sort of moral concerns that went into the construction of the three-tier system when it was put in place back in the 1930s the concerns then were very much informed by the recent history of that time. Prior to prohibition the United States suffered tremendous amounts of alcohol abuse and it was the alcohol industry operated under a system that was essentially unregulated and so you had these problems of the tied houses. You had a problem as a result of the tied houses just to be clear on that that's essentially a retail outlet for alcohol which is controlled by the producer of alcohol. These tied houses because they each only carry their products of one producer if they wanted to be in a given market they had to have their own outlet there and so instead of one bar on a corner you might have four or five bars in a small area so that contributed greatly to the tremendous problems this country had with alcohol at that time. The response was prohibition which had its own bad consequences rampant crime, corruption of law enforcement large black markets and flatly it completely failed. So that was the recent history when the repeal laws went through and when the three-tier system was put in place in the 1930s and it was absolutely an effort to ensure that those conditions the conditions prior to prohibition would never come back again that no individual producers would have so much power market power and political power that they could force their products on society to the degree that they had. In practical terms what they came up with in constructing this three-tier system or what their main concerns were were to first of all ensure that control of alcohol commerce remained at the state and local level so that individual communities could tailor the way alcohol was marketed and sold and just generally was made available in their local areas according to local concerns local morals and then the other one again was simply to to ensure that that market was separated in such a way that you couldn't have the appearance as we have today of one or two companies simply dominating an entire market and drawing market power and political power to themselves to the detriment of the rest of society and even to the detriment of competitiveness in the market. That basically if that has made sense is sort of the I suppose the concerns that I hope we can talk about here today and I'll turn it over to our other guests who can talk more specifically about their own experiences with these moral and social concerns related to alcohol. Before we go to the next slide I did want to ask you Tim well I want to say two things first of all as Barry said at the beginning of this panel this whole project with Washington Monthly and New America is not funded by any industry. This is something we did in-house with our own funds and it's important that you all know that and that the audience today on the internet knows that. Second Tim I wonder if you could just say a few words about what was sort of the you described the system that we have now in the United States that is the legacy of prohibition. Before we move on can you say a few words about the nation that you contrast the United States with and that is the UK. A very good point so it's very useful to make a comparison, a historical comparison between the United States and the United Kingdom regarding the effect or the presence of alcohol in those societies and the way those differ and then to look at that in the context of the way regulation of alcohol differs. In fact quite ironically the kind of seminal document that led to the three-tier system toward liquor control which was produced in I believe 1933 looked at the United Kingdom at that time as a real model of how to kind of shape the alcohol system in such a way that alcohol abuse was not a very great problem. England had had its own temperance movement because it had its own problems and England had done a very good job of basically encouraging better behavior including milk bars which are exactly what they sound like and so by the 1930s they really were not suffering from tremendous problems with alcohol abuse. Since that time however England essentially seems to have fallen asleep on the job when it came to regulating alcohol and the fundamental difference between them and the United States is that they never made any attempt to regulate the market for alcohol. Such regulations as they had for sale and consumption to ensuring that glasses were all of the right size the official queen's pint every glass would be checked by regulators similar for shots of alcohol it has to be a certain small number of milliliters. There were rules bars might have to close on Sundays or they might have to close by 11pm or what have you but in terms of the actual any rules towards the way alcohol could be marketed to how it could be sold really are non-existent there and we feel that that has contributed very strongly to the extreme levels of problem drinking in the United Kingdom. You can buy alcohol there at any hour of the day since 1980 the affordability of alcohol in the United Kingdom has dropped or has has risen by about 70% it is 70% easier to buy alcohol there than it was even 30 years ago and it should be pointed out that the United Kingdom is now finally recognizing that it has a real problem it has spent about 10 years studying the issue and now every single party in the United Kingdom has on its platform some form of regulation of the market which includes introducing price controls and efforts to finally break up the tied house system which they have lived under for a long time you compare that to the United States over that same period at the beginning of course we established this three-tier system and that was a very fundamental way of regulating the market such that again it was kept to control of it was kept in local hands and no single player was allowed to get sort of undue amount of influence over it we feel that that was much more effective than the United Kingdom system and I think that what's going on in the UK now kind of validates that position Hi I'm Tom Baebor I work at the University of Connecticut and for most of my career as a social psychologist and then with an additional specialization in public health I've been interested in various types of alcohol from a public health perspective so what I'm going to describe for you today are some observations about an important perspective that we need to apply to this whole issue of alcohol control which in part was alluded to by Tim's presentation in the system that was put together following prohibition and the people who put that system together were acutely aware of the public health and social welfare problems that can be created when alcohol is freely available within a society and there are when you look globally at countries and the way they deal with alcohol you can find tremendous variability in the controls that are used and tremendous variability in the level of problems that are experienced a couple of years ago starting in 2003 and then with a revised version of the book in 2010 I and a number of colleagues who came from about nine different countries who had spent most of their lives studying alcohol from different perspectives not together and put together a book called Alcohol No Ordinary Commodity the title of the book came from kind of an epiphany of talking about alcohol control policy and the research that had been done and the fact is that both from the perspective of policymakers who designed policies to control alcohol problems and from an economic perspective and from a public health perspective alcohol is no ordinary commodity yes it contributes to the agricultural sector provides employment provides entertainment and sociability and does all these things for society but one of the things that comes out when you look at this vast literature over the last hundred years and particularly over the past 30 or 40 years coming out of the scientific journals is that the benefits connected with the production and the sale and the distribution of alcohol come at a tremendous cost to society and the World Health Organization has begun to quantify those costs in terms of what they call the global burden of disease and when you compare all the risk factors that contribute to all the causes of disability and death in the world alcohol comes out close to the top in most areas of the world it's among the top five in just about every region except the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa so what we have is a commodity that causes a tremendous amount of health damage and damage to the social fabric it's the leading risk factor for certain forms of cardiovascular disease for cancers accidents and injuries we documented causal relationships between alcohol and about 50 or 60 health conditions and the evidence is incontroversial the mechanisms that account for this have been investigated and what we now know that there are perhaps at least three major mechanisms alcohol is a toxic agent when it's taken in steady and high quantities but it begins about two drinks a day and when you get up to five or six drinks of liver cirrhosis certain types of heart disease and accidents and injuries the second mechanism is intoxication completely different mechanism but alcohol impairs cycle motor performance and when you go to an emergency room on a Friday or Saturday night you find lots of people there because they had a little bit too much to drink or they had a lot to drink either way they were impaired they had some sort of crisis and they had to be taken for medical attention the third mechanism where alcohol does its harm is addiction or alcohol dependence and that is the classic example that everyone points to but when you look at the epidemiological data you find that alcohol is a more dependence only accounts for about half of the damage that alcohol does the other part is done by people just drinking too much it's kids getting drunk on a weekend or somebody going to a wedding and getting into a traffic accident because they drank too much so there are many more of those people than there are alcoholics but the damage is almost comparable so there's plenty of scientific evidence to document the damage the question is what can we do about it the major purpose of the book that we put together was to look at the various ways that societies have tried to control this vast public health problem and the research evidence that suggests whether they work or not and as it turns out there's been a lot of research in the last 30 or 40 years research by economists research by psychologists research by sociologists and other disciplines have been devoted to looking at the effects of drunk driving laws the effects of just say no laws or recommendations primary prevention treatment of alcohol dependence controls on availability and so on and so forth we evaluated over 43 strategies and interventions that had been used in the world to control alcohol problems and we found evidence for the effectiveness of approximately two-thirds of them a number of them were ineffective but still used the conclusions that we drew were that there are at least four mechanisms that you can use to control alcohol related problems control physical availability and through age restrictions and your rates of late night traffic fatalities in 16 and 17 years old your olds go down dramatically as they did in the United States you can control hours of sale density of outlets and time of purchase and you reduce alcohol problems if you liberalize those policies as has happened in the UK you get an epidemic of binge drinking on the streets and you get panic availability controls price is a major lever that can be used to control alcohol related problems when the price of alcohol decreases due to failure to index excise taxes to inflation then you get more consumption when you raise taxes or in other ways control the price of alcohol you get reductions in alcohol related problems another way to control problems or to exacerbate them is through psychological availability marketing activities interest young people get them started earlier and when they begin to drink they're imitating the models they see in much of contemporary alcohol advertising which is teaching people how to drink heavily social availability controls in another way when we control the drinking context by stopping people when they're drinking too much or when we have drunk driving measures where they're based on deterrence rather than punishment and people think that they might get apprehended at a roadside road sobriety checkpoint you can get dramatic reductions in drunk driving so there are a variety of levers that have been identified through a tremendous amount of research hundreds of studies hundreds of scores of literature reviews in each of these areas which indicate which policies are effective and which ones are not putting that all together we can ask ourselves what are the effects of the consolidation and concentration of the alcohol industry on these levers that either increase or decrease alcohol consumption we have the evidence that the major producers are concentrating not just in the United States but all over the world and it's not only happening in the beer industry it's happening in distilled spirits and to a lesser extent in the wine industry along with the concentration of the major producers you have delegation of a lot of their public relations and political activity to third party organizations and some of its trade associations the more significant work is done by front organizations like what are called social aspect organizations that conduct lobbying for industry interest but also do corporate social responsibility work other things that are happening with concentration you get more money focused on marketing it's a strategy that has been well publicized in the business literature as the consumption in the developed countries has leveled off you've gotten the major producers moving into Africa, Asia and Latin America and the profits that accrue from economies of scale are being reallocated to more aggressive marketing activities product design is another one Mike's hard lemonade sweetened alcohol beverages caffeinated drinks designed for a target population if you look at the internal documents that the home office in the UK subpoenaed that even among the emails of the executives there seems to be a discussion of how these beverages and marketing strategies are targeted at this demographic which is right at the border of what we would call underage drinking partnerships with NGOs in the public health community are a way of getting good public relations but also neutralizing people who are raising objections and promoting public health interest lobbying most often is done against public health measures and it's done for economic reasons but sometimes it's argued that it doesn't help public health even though we know that when taxes are reasonably make alcohol less affordable and when controls on availability make alcohol less available we know that those will improve the health of the population but they're still opposed marketing self-regulation is a big industry priority which is being promoted worldwide and the activities of the industry in this area seem to be leading to a environment where alcohol marketing is only minimally controlled research that we've done suggests that the two major producers in this country and Hauser-Busch MBEV and SAB Miller when it comes to the NCAA games for example over the past 10 years are responsible for broadcasting ads to a mixed audience of underage and of age drinkers ads that in their content contain significant violations up to 50% of the ads have violations identified by raiders from a public health perspective so there's evidence from the literature not only that taxes and availability controls and drunk driving laws and controls on marketing work but there's evidence that self-regulation is not working what we see is a the elements of a theory of causality that comes from the, not the genetics of the individual which do play a role or the personality of the drinker which can play a role in excessive drinking but we see activities of corporations often in collusion with governments that create an environment often an economic environment that affects public health and we can start tracing the causal mechanisms through what we call an epidemiological cascade that starts with the decisions of corporate executives public relations firms that they have in opposing public health legislation and designing products that fit a target population that wouldn't ordinarily be seeking these products and combining marketing setting up the organizations lobbying product design and policies or lobbying for policies that lower price and increase availability all of this constitutes a perfect storm for an alcohol epidemic so in conclusion I leave you with an image that I have of being a graduate student at the University of Arizona over 30 years ago and walking around the campus on a Friday night and it would be pretty tranquil fast forward about 10 years when my son was a student out there and I went to visit him and he was at a party and I was walking around the campus on a Friday night and it was bizarre people standing out in front of buildings and dormitories and fraternity houses and sorority houses all drinking people intoxicated police cars coming here to and fro ambulances coming in and out it was a real zoo what accounted for this change similar changes in the UK as Tim has suggested where 30 years ago you could walk on a Friday night in a small center city and not experience anybody who is harassing you or who was drunk now you have to step over drunk in bodies to get into a restaurant it is again a real zoo I think the evidence that we have accumulated or put together suggests that it is within the powers the levers of both governments and corporations to control these epidemics to control them by either increasing heavy drinking or decreasing heavy drinking mainly through controls on economic availability physical availability social availability physical availability thank you so often times when I am on a panel in discussing this issue I know there is people in the audience often times thinking so what is she doing up there what is the faith community have to say about this and I think that one of the things that I have recognized in terms of the work that we do on alcohol policy public policy advocacy as a church is that we have to spend a lot of time interpreting both why we work on this issue and also with likely partners explain why we are in the room in the first place and I think it really stems from those of us who are clergy often times see the downstream outcomes of addiction of alcoholism I am reminded of when I first began working I worked in direct services and one of the things that really instigated my work or catalyzed my wanting to move upstream in working on public policy was this young man who kept coming in time after time after short term treatment long term treatment who was so had been addicted to alcohol for so long that he was no longer his brain was no longer had the ability really to allow him to be a functioning member of society and the frustration that we as clergy feel when we see those kinds of issues and problems coming in our door time and time again those outcomes and realizing that the churches often times our work is focused on dealing with that downstream problem by working on recovery working on recovery ministry that is something that is very comfortable for churches and faith communities to do is to work in the field of recovery and realizing that there was a much more expansive way that we needed to be looking at this and so the general board of church of society is actually the body that inherited the historic work of the church under the board of temperance and public morals. They worked and they were seminal in the movement in relation to prohibition and then afterwards in temperance and the setup of the three tier system and one of the things that as we've moved towards contemporary issues and worked on addressing this problem by addressing it from an effective public health standpoint is to help our churches and our local communities to come along there and it has been a challenge I think at the local level to interpret some of this work Tom Seminal Book Alcohol No Ordinary Commodity to me was life changing and transforming for me but how to interpret that to others in our local community and and so we began this campaign of education first and then we're now in the second phase of this education in organizing United Methodist and Tom for instance has been on in national phone calls with United Methodist from around the country about why it matters that we address public policy why it matters that the church become involved with the other stakeholders and I think it boils down to some of the issues that Tom addresses we care about the public good we care about the common good we stakeholders that are in public health and in the faith community we care about the ability for every member of society to thrive and anything that stands in the way or an obstacle to our ability to thrive is something that we need to pay attention to and we need to address and this issue I think one of the most troubling aspects of the work that we do in the U.S. is that we allow the industry at the table of public health I've said very candidly in public arenas that I feel like the alcohol industry has no business being at the table of public health addressing these issues that it ought to be those stakeholders that keep in mind the common good and the ability for humans to thrive at every level and so that that young man who isn't that I saw functioning member of society we've done the kind of education we've done is we've taken the things that public health has done and the article that Mr. Heffernan has done as well and interpreted through the lens of the faith community and one of the things we've done is sort of develop a language around that a language that we're familiar with but yet addresses the issue so we develop sort of a platform for that where we said that every person ought to have available to them God's vision for them of abundance and healing of community that humanity is valued above everything else including in a society where often times the economic interests are above the human interests it's very counter cultural to think that way and then also finally restoration or transformation that there's an ability people to thriving and being a functioning member of society and so that public policy weighs in on that that public policy matters that it's not simply about recovery ministry otherwise we never get to the point of abundance we never get to the point where we're in community and we care about each other in our society we never get to the point where we value human beings above corporations or industry and we never get to the point where people can attain restoration or transformation unless we tackle those root causes Tom did Tom in his usual excellent way addresses some of the things that need to be tackled and the faith community I think in terms of educating them once they become aware of why we need to work on public policy they can be a force to be reckoned with with other stakeholders in communities where faith law enforcement and public health work together you find effective policy I believe you find lower addiction rates you find social costs addressed in a comprehensive and integral way with integrity and favoring the common good it allows less loopholes in my opinion to industry to try to water down policy to try to water down regulation to try to do away with those effective measures that are moving as Tom said through countless research countless research in papers and studies to show that that if you enact these measures you have a society that values the common good I like the word just rather than moral because I think moral often has negative connotations or baggage associated with it in fact the alcohol industry uses it to exploit or weaken the message of the faith community they use that word because people attach those negative connotations to it so the words we use in the faith community are just common good the ability to thrive these are all things that we believe they're not it's not a manipulation of the word moral rather it's things we intrinsically believe as faith communities that we see as our creator or God's vision for our world both in the US and then globally as well so and the faith community is a key member of the community that works on this because we're trusted messengers we're trusted advocates in a society that's increasingly skeptical and critical of those who carry messages in a place in a society where there's much misinformation that's out there one place where there are trusted messengers is in the faith community so one of the principal things we do is make sure that our local people are informed we continue to work on that campaign we're activating them in key places both at the local level and then up all the way to the national or the federal level and you know in every faith community are also our local community leaders almost to many of our local leaders both in city councils and county government at the state level and at the national level have a connection in some way most to a faith community and so it's very important to involve that community in the effort because they can be first to be reckoned with we've proven that on the issue of tobacco for instance we've been heavily involved in the issue of tobacco and we hope to continue to do work as effectively on this as well in the alcohol industry I'm the last one for those of you who want to get up and do a couple of jumping jacks or something here because you've been sitting for a long time I'm Jerry Oliver and I am grateful to be a part of this panel I am not as distinguished as some of the panelists here I'm not a journalist of grade note a professor at a university or a renowned theologian I'm a cop I'm a guy who spent 40 years in policing and perspectives about the execution level what we've been talking about what's always interesting to me in conversations like this is long after the people who represent all the institutions go home at five o'clock it is the police officers who are out here to deal with all of the institutional failures all the experiments and all of the great ideas that went by the wayside it's the police officers and many of them very young police officers who have not had the kind of life experiences that many of you have have to clean up the mess that a lot of the decisions have been made so that's what I want to do I want to lean into about three perspectives here as from my career of being at the execution level dealing with a lot of the issues that we've been talking about today as was mentioned in introduction I've been a police chief in Detroit, Michigan I was a police chief in Richmond, Virginia I've been a police chief in Pasadena, California I retired from the Phoenix Police Department after 21 years I've spent a great deal of time with PERF executive research forum IACP which is the International Association of Chiefs of Police I ran their community policing consortium for a number of years and the police foundation I've done several internships many times studying some of the same issues that we are talking about here today and so the three perspectives that I want to really lean into with you briefly is from a law enforcement perspective from a perspective of a state regulator because I was also the director for several years a director of liquor, the ABC director in the state of Arizona and then I want to talk a little bit about my experience just briefly with the center of alcohol policy where I serve as an advisor at the moment I totally agree with the statement and Mr. Baber's book alcohol is no ordinary commodity it's been mentioned several times and as a police chief I can't agree with that title more not from an academic standpoint but from a standpoint of actually seeing the effects of the no ordinary commodity alcohol brings people together in great celebration and alcohol can turn whole communities and whole neighborhoods apart I've seen that with my own eyes not something that somebody told me about but something that I've seen properly regulated the physical availability and the dealing with the abuse and misuse is huge for those of us who has been and continue to be in liquor law enforcement and law enforcement in general in fact no stakeholder is more directly affected by the liberalization of alcohol regulations or the tendency we have towards deregulation or the erosion of the standards that we've had over the last 80 years yet too often law enforcement's input and expertise is not sought or even considered before new laws or political based initiatives are enacted and I can give you a really salient example a few years ago a decision was made that we would no longer arrest we would no longer arrest people who were intoxicated and public if that was their only infraction and that police officers were asked then or demanded police officers were demanded to call a social service agency to come and take those people away well when the budget cuts came and they cut the social service agency we did not change the law no one consulted with the police officers and so now where are these people what kind of problems did that cause with people laying on the streets where many of you recently probably have stepped over people who were intoxicated laying in the streets and police officers are unarmed with no ability to deal with that at all from a criminal justice system and I can tell you just from experience that I had police I had individuals that I knew when I was a patrolman working the street that would come up and knock on their car window when I was sitting here doing my paperwork and asked me if they could go to jail because they were cold or hungry or they were looking for some agency that would help them and really couldn't find one for many different reasons but a decision was made without consulting the police department or policing the industry of policing so as a stakeholder it is very important that we are at the table before new laws or political based initiatives are enacted the role of law enforcement in communicating threats to public health and safety from deregulation of alcohol sales by initiative or budget cuts are important because action has a significant impact on local police resources the lawlessness the coming from the misuse of an abuse actually of alcohol is a common denominator in the substantial portion of everyday law enforcement let me tell you that on a 24-hour a day clock or maybe even a 7-day week calendar alcohol is responsible for many of the spikes of demand from early morning through late night alcohol inspires aggression whether personal violence such as suicide interpersonal violence such as rape, homicide or domestic abuse group violence and unrulyness that was just talked about just a minute ago on campuses or riotous acts or sporting events or vehicle violence such as deadly DUI crashes is a major concern to everyone especially local law enforcement or local leaders and seeking to effectively deploy the resources to address these issues on a 24-hour a day or 7-day week basis for instance in a recent study according to the Justice Department which has the Bureau of Justice Statistics BJA 40% of all offenders arrested going back to 2008 had been using alcohol at the time of the offense they were convicted of but regardless of these facts many states are considering weakening various alcohol laws in the name of consumer convenience consumer choice increased revenues to satisfy some questionable industry accommodation few have seriously included or even considered the views of law enforcement or any of these changes on any of these changes since law enforcement will bear the effects of these changes there should be closely consulted at the outset in order that proper planning and resources can be obtained and assigned and as I mentioned being a part of some of these national police organizations that's one of the major complaints that police officers and police chiefs around the country make and that decisions are made and they find out about them later other proposals involved the privatization of control states in order to increase sales outlets and hours of sale in order for privatization to replace lost control state revenues the volume available and outlets where alcohol is sold must often increase as well more locations for alcohol sales increase the need for more liquor law enforcement and liquor law enforcement compliance checks to reduce the illegal sales to minors and over service to intoxicated individuals some of the other effects of privatization and expanded access points the need to change liquor law enforcement staff training to match the ever evolving retail alcohol products and many of the new retail alcohol business models that are out there I mean some of that was alluded to earlier but now you can buy not only beer but spirits and movies and on trolley cars and sporting events nail salons barbershops I mean you can ever expanding places where there's an opportunity for abuse and misuse I was told a story last night at dinner about a nudist colony in Arizona that wanted to open a bar and the problems that that caused for us and how do you do enforcement at a nudist colony how do you do anything covertly I mean what officers are you going to send there what liquor law officers are going to send and not be identified and then work in a store their badges so so more alcohol consumption in addition to criminal matters mentioned earlier increased costs for public excuse me for police service on order maintenance issues and that was something that we don't really talk about much but disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace and laudering and any number of nuisance and annoyance calls that police officers receive about I'd say 15 or 20% of police officers 24 hour a day calls for service have to do with real criminal matters obviously about 80% of the calls deal with these annoyance calls and many of them at increased personal risk to measure to violence to first responders at all levels and then the need to radically review regulatory budgets to address additional police technology and equipment at a time when government funds are being cut back and are very thin state regulator as a state regulator in 2007 it was mentioned earlier Governor Napolitano at the time now Governor Napolitano asked me to trade in my law enforcement credentials for a post at the Arizona liquor licenses and control state alcohol regulators are also missing in action at the table of a lot of decisions that are being made and they have a lot to say about the balance and market balance and the forces that affect regulation and distribution of alcohol in my case with all of about 30 employees for a state that has 12,000 licensees and when I left there we had 12 real enforcers for 15 counties and if you're familiar with Arizona some of our counties are bigger than some states in the east and we had one enforcer for the entire county it was no way to really effectively and evenly apply state alcohol beverage control laws however could I as an Arizona state alcohol regulator affect a global alcohol company who does business around the world no did alcohol companies care that I thought of what I thought or wanted to do as a chief Arizona regulator probably not but in those in state alcohol but those in state alcohol retailers and distributors were very much aware of the department's needs and department's charge to ensure responsible sale and consumption of alcohol beverages in many states and in many and especially I'd notice this in Arizona actually the industry and this is somewhat different from what I was stated this morning what Steve had to say Mr. Higginbotham had to say about what was going on in Arkansas in my experience though that generally the industry gave lip service in support of strong regulation they would talk about strong regulation and the need for strong regulation and the need for the three tier system which depended on strong regulation but they were absent many times at the legislature where the real tough decisions were made about budgets and since the state alcohol regulator doesn't have a checkbook and lobbyists generally do sometimes we're left on the short end of the decision making process so I offer the perspective of former law enforcement leader in the state alcohol regulator to this debate about resources and where the resources ought to be spent and that anything that can augment and improve the role and resources of state regulators in liquor law enforcement should be taken and then finally just mentioned briefly about the center for alcohol policy a couple of years ago I was asked to be an advisor there and I I feel very privileged to be a part of what's going on at the center for alcohol policy CAP as we call it was established in 2007 it is intended to foster debate, education analysis, research examination of state alcohol regulations and its implications for citizens across the United States the center is an organization that seeks to find common ground among various interests interested in alcohol policy and getting them to communicate in ways that they normally don't communicate in the center's alcohol symposiums which I find really interesting the president of mothers against drunk driving for instance share their concerns and positions in the same room with state regulators officials, religious leaders community organizers and key representatives of the alcohol industry and in some ways this is a little bit different from what you said I really think it's really healthy to have everybody in the room talking about public health issues or even alcohol policy public health advocates are briefed on troublesome regulatory issues facing the states and by sharing ideas concerns engaging in dialogue and forging consensus better policy I think results and interdisciplinary relationships are achieved the center through educational efforts like our annual essay contest support the 21st amendment that grants states and local governments alcohol bearish control authority within their budgets excuse me within their borders the three tier system that we've been talking about today effectively works against the normal efficiencies that would come with vertical integration and enhances responsible alcohol consumption in our view two projects I would like to highlight from the center one is a white paper the center sponsored about three years ago it was entitled the dangers of alcohol deregulation in the UK in the United Kingdom which we've talked about a little bit here today this report was written by Pam Erickson and it really underscores the problems with alcohol deregulation in the United Kingdom Tim covered it much of this in his comments and in his article so I won't repeat any of that but what I will say though is that from a law enforcement policing execution level standpoint it's very clear that we do not want to go there in this country in our country and then finally the center last year reprinted the seminal treaties on alcohol regulation towards liquor control it's been referenced several times here today it's referenced in some of the literature that you've received here today this is a it really is very relevant it was written in 1933 or about then it's about 80 years old but it's very relevant to what we're talking about today and if you have any at all any claim to be interested in alcohol regulation or alcohol deregulation or the discussions about the three-tier system are about the local control you have to get a copy of this book and you have to read it you can get a copy actually from the center for alcohol policy you can also pay a small fee and get it on amazon.com or receive it from the center's website centerforalcoholpolicy.com thank you very much well I want to thank the panelists for an extremely enlightening session here you know Tim when we launched our investigation with the help of Barry and Phil Longman we were coming at this from the point of view of industry consolidation and sort of found our way to the issue of the street level issues of alcohol availability abuse and so forth and it was logic that kind of led us there at least me and you know in this business you do so much reporting and then you trust that the reporting is leading you in the right direction but you don't know if you don't necessarily know how right you are or how not right you are and one of the gratifying things for me is to be in the presence of folks who do this for a living and have independently researched over many many years their own experience over many many years found their way to where we started and we found our way to you the other thing that occurred to me listening to all this is you know we have to be about 10 or 15 years ahead of the country on this issue I don't think that this issue has at all permeated the world it has in the UK it took an enormous amount of damage in many many years of living with rising alcohol abuse stemming from the deregulation of their markets and the evolution the consolidation of their markets what's different in the United States is we have a system that's kept it from going in that direction but that system is being eaten away like a fine home with termites and I guess the question the question in my mind is given that no one knows about this stuff other than people who studied it people in the business, people who deal cops and ministers and so forth who deal with the end result how do you marshal interest in preserving something which once it's gone creates tremendous problems do we have to wait for the whole darn thing to collapse do we have to wait for millions of extra alcohol abuse cases before we think you know maybe we had a good thing going before so I don't know how to even begin to know how to answer that question but let me begin with some questions first Reverend I want to ask you you said something interesting you said that for the faith community dealing with recovery is a comfortable role there is the need for that and it's a natural role for the faith community for churches but I think what you were saying was that after some time of dealing with the consequences one begins to look upstream at what is bringing this flow of destruction down on you and you know I went to college in Evanston which is the home of the ladies women's temperance league and we all you know at Northwestern chugging our beers about the prohibition movement and I think in the minds of most Americans the notion of doing something especially from the faith community about alcohol leads us right back to that quote unquote failed experiment which by the way didn't fail in every respect alcohol abuse did go down dramatically during the era of prohibition so I guess my question to you is is there among your peers in your denomination and other denominations any kind of growing awareness that the damage that you're seeing down at the grassroots level is being affected by changes in the market structure of alcohol companies at the top and if not what do we need to do to get some awareness among the faith community I don't think it's percolated down enough I mean it's just begun to we've just begun to have those discussions I think there's some barriers to that one barrier is when we speak oftentimes at the you know social scientist theoretical academic language level of it it's important to remember how to translate that down to the ordinary folk at the local level in congregations in churches and temples and mosques and I think until we do that and show the direct correlation I think people who do recovery ministry and who do the direct services day in and day out understand that there's a greater that it stems from a greater source I mean the the root of this issue is at a greater source what I don't think they understand or what I think that we need to do a better job at is educating them on effective actions to address that and to have voices that are strong and unequivocal about why we're in this in the first place you know when you have well-funded adversaries I think it's important that people hear from groups who have the public interest at heart groups who have public health and public interest at heart and it's very and one of those effective forces can be as I said the faith community but we need to continue to do that translation so that people at the local level understand that correlation and I think one of the most effective pieces of the article was the comparison with the UK because it shows you what the worst case scenario is going to be or at least part of the worst case scenario I think it could get even worse than that actually but it gives a pretty clear picture of what it would look like if we Swiss cheese the three-tier system and I think that we have to be good interpreters of that and we have to have messengers that do that in addition to the social scientists that we need to involve and train and educate others that can go out and be those sources so that's why it's so important for us to do that with faith leaders and I think that's a case I think for law enforcement too you know being the interpreter for law enforcement I mean presentations I had was when law enforcement the law enforcement association described some of the things that they do day in and day out in the evening in trying to address these downstream pieces and why they want to work on the upstream so it's just a matter of connecting all the connecting that web of people who care and instead of being on parallel tracks Thank you very much Doctor please if there's somebody who wants to weigh in I don't mean to Doctor Weber you you're very very pithy and informative description of where the literature is and what we've learned over many many years but most particularly in the last 20 or 30 about what works and what works less well I just found extraordinary and very very helpful is there you know as you give talks around the country and around the world any sense that there is a market for what you're saying among elected officials at any level of government but most especially at the at the national level because frankly one of the reasons that this story appealed to us is in our broader interests in the consolidation of various industries is that this is one that everyone can relate to where the damage of consolidation is not a diffuse one of price and choice and so forth but you know the destruction of human thriving as the Reverend was saying I'm wondering though with this new information have you have you seen public officials eyes opening up to to the dangers that you're talking about I think the short answer is yes the eyes of public officials are beginning to open up they're looking for advice but at the same time it's discouraging because what is also happening is that there's a window of opportunity that is closing possibly quite rapidly examples because I get called because I do work with the World Health Organization and I also do free consulting with any public interest group that wants to hear what I have to say but I've consulted with the Nordic Council which represents the Nordic countries in the European Union and the European Union is perhaps the area of the world that has the highest rates of alcohol consumption and alcohol problems and they're being devastated by alcohol problems and they try they succeed in some cases in Lithuania I was over there at the invitation of an NGO couple of years ago because the parliament had passed a ban on alcohol advertising but at the last minute the president delayed the implementation of the ban for two years I happened to be back there last year when the two year period was over the parliament at the last minute reversed that ban and now from what I hear newspaper reports from people in the country there's a scandal that the parliamentarians had been paid off to vote in Africa there have been conferences organized by alcohol industry representatives in many of the countries where government officials NGOs, academics and people are brought together all funded by the alcohol industry they produce a report that all comes from the same word processor of an executive in an alcohol corporation and they're presented to the governments as a model for alcohol policy for that country most of those countries have very weak alcohol policies and they're starting to experience concentration of the same industry we're talking about here except that they're expanding into a market where the potential for growing the market is huge and it's very discouraging because public health officials are left out of the policy making process so you get a lot of interest among policy makers, public health people but the struggle is that we're competing in this marketplace of ideas with very strong economic interest and it didn't used to be that way it becomes concentrated so you're seeing the same faces whether you go to Africa or Asia or Latin America you bring up a great point and that is and it's something that really we didn't get that deeply into in the article but that's the issue of the political economy and one of the chief reasons and I'm translating the wisdom of my colleagues Phil Longman and Barry Lynn here but the progressive era effort to hem in the size of corporations was precisely so that they wouldn't grow to such size and monopoly power that they could manipulate the political process and drown out the voices of law enforcement, the faith community public health officials, local officials entrepreneurs, etc with gobs of money and phony studies and so forth so I think the the narrowing of the window you talked about is very true Mr. Oliver I guess I'll ask you the same question does you have over here law enforcement as you say the group that has to clean up the mess from the decisions the elected officials and others make without your community's input and then you have these problems of political economy happening that Tim describes in his book it would seem to me invaluable if one wanted to do something about this problem of concentration let's say in the alcohol industry to have law enforcement's input to have law enforcement's backing frankly its support for doing something is there and it's basically the same question I asked Reverend Abrams is there a real understanding in law enforcement that these two things are connected that the consolidation of the liquor industry and the attacks on the three tiered system will are leading to will lead to problems that cops in the beat are going to have to clean up you know I think police leadership and some of the organizations that I described earlier certainly get it they understand that and I agree with Reverend Abrams that police leaders, law enforcement leaders, liquor law enforcement leaders want to move and be a part of the decision making upstream because we do see what happens downstream and to the extent that we can and when we have been involved we've been able to avert some real catastrophes from a public health standpoint and from a community standpoint I mean in my career I've had an opportunity to work with many people in the academic community for instance certainly with the center and with other organizations that have had the opportunity to have input early on and it's a win-win for everyone so I think we get it I don't think the necessarily policing overall get it because that's not where they are they are hired to be warriors and hired to be the people that sort of sort of go to war against crime and this many times is seen as a social service or sort of less than policing kind of a thing but this is what we do 80% of the time for those of us who know that we're eager to work with the liquor law enforcement to work with other areas of the at our society to really come up with solutions to some of these problems before they get to be major problems on the street. I think we should open up some questions from the audience Tim you had you wanted to comment on anything that's been said or we can wait for okay so we have please raise your hand now the mic will be passed to you and if you have an affiliation please state it and also state your name Bernie Asher research fellow with the American Antitrust Institute thank you for your presentation on the other side of the question the social and the safety and health problems associated with this product my questions though are really geared to competition policy one question is whether any other country in the world has a three tier distribution system and if so what is the US performance how does that match up with these other countries now I realize that you have 43 mechanisms it's going to be very hard to make a judgment about that I don't know if there have been any studies to that effect second question is if we had a monopoly for beer or all alcoholic beverages is the fear among the health and safety community that prices will be lowered to such an extent that there would be over consumption of alcoholic beverages that's what I've been reading which would be completely opposite to what the fear of monopolies is that they would raise prices and hurt consumers so those are my two questions thanks doctor baby you want to take a shot at the first at least and maybe the others can talk to the second yeah I'm not aware of the structure of the alcohol distribution and production system in different countries there are a variety of different models some of them will resemble what the US has others have more of a monopoly system where the state controls the monopoly and what we've learned from looking at alcohol control is regardless of the system whether it's three tiered or one tiered the main vehicle for controlling the health and public safety issues in a country is the extent to which the control system is capable of limiting the universal availability of alcohol and limiting the price and in some cases limiting the distribution or sale of alcohol below market prices this happened in the UK where it's used as a loss leader and now there is a large movement which is partially successful I think in Scotland there is a minimum price on alcohol and it's probably going to happen in the UK too so the three tiers theoretically should help to prevent the excessive availability of alcohol and lowering the price but there are other mechanisms to accomplish that I can probably take some of the pricing questions but the concern that we had or that I had in the paper is not necessarily just flat lowering of prices but the monopoly power that the two major brewers have already accumulated allows them to manipulate the price of their products both for sale to their wholesalers and then ultimately on the market manipulate it in ways that greatly favor their business models and greatly disfavor competition I suppose a perfect example of that the fact that they already have this power was what Steve Hickenbotham was talking about where ABI was offering a case of beer to one distributor for say $15 and another for $20 it's clearly already within their power and within their profitability model to manipulate the prices so that they get their favorable outcome for their similarly Carlos Brito the head of ABI is on record saying I mean discussing that the sort of pricing model that they're looking at since he came in they have raised the prices of their budget brands I forget the number but they've raised it to within about 20% of their premiums that's your regular Budweiser Miller what have you well not Miller in the future to raise the price of the premiums towards their craft and kind of ultra premium brands so they are manipulating it were they to gain total control I think in theory they could just say we'll lower the price across the board and alcohol is price elastic to about minus 0.35 so a 10% drop in the price of alcohol you get 3.5% more consumption on average but I don't know that they would simply do something so simple I would imagine they might drop some prices of some raise some prices of others but in any case you know they would know to in very very very fine detail exactly how to manipulate their prices to maximize their profit well you asked about concerns and our concerns are and again from a law enforcement perspective that low prices and increasing accessibility ultimately will saturate communities will affect the quality of life of those communities as we erode away the three tier system and the tide house particularly the tide house rules we're concerned that the saturation issue the pre-prohibition circumstances to creep back into our society and at some point become acceptable and we're really concerned about the quality of life of communities as a result of those erosions this gentleman right here Hi my name is Michael I just recently graduated from Fordham University up in New York sort of going off of what you just said Mr. Oliver there's an area for those of you that don't know the campus for Fordham is in the Bronx so it's already a rough neighborhood but in that particular neighborhood we have what's called the tri bar and it's an area where there are literally it's one corner and you have three there I think there are now actually four bars right there exactly what you're talking about but Fordham and the NYPD in that area find it a benefit because it's easier to monitor what goes on particularly in that area rather than dispersing a population where you know you're going to have large alcoholism across a greater area it's all contained does that go into any decisions or ideas or processes for you know what you're just talking about with containment in the future well you know that's sort of the least of the evils so to speak to have them all congregated in one area but the resources so the the victimization that occurs when you have that kind of concentration I think is expanded and the resources that the NYPD has to assign to that area is probably extraordinary I'm sure that the that the leadership the people who have to make decisions about deployment and how they're going to spend their resources are not necessarily happy about that concentration and then they're probably not in a position to really speak about the impact that's having on you know sort of the the perimeters around those places in terms of the saturation what does it do to young people drinking people that are a lot of the illegal activity associated with that what are the statistics associated with date rapes and assaults and riotous activity when you have that kind of concentration so it's not just about the alcohol it's the effects that happen sort of as it exponentially explodes out into other kinds of areas that I spoke about earlier so my my thought is that's the sort of the best choice among the evils that you have as a as a police department Will Harrison from Harrisonburg, Virginia and I wanted to ask a question in our town I've had a sort of traditional where there's been a DOI fatality it usually results in the in the bar that sold the alcohol to the driver of losing or actually just end up shutting down in another case where bars that have had somebody very publicly inebriated have led their temporary suspension of their driver's license and one of the question for you is do you have you encountered many mechanisms of liability for the alcohol industry for public impacts and also I've heard people talk about how alcohol should have dosage requirements on them like do not consume more than three in one hour and I'm wondering if anybody's heard of that and I also wanted to ask if anybody ever thinks like when you go to buy Sudafed they drew your driver's license and say I'm sorry you've already bought two Sudafeds this month you can't have anymore until next month and whether there's any chance it would ever be dosage restrictions like that for alcohol well I I'll react to the technology I had mentioned earlier that there are actually several ways that I think that we can be more effective with the proper support from the industry and from political leaders it's going to take bigger budgets, more technology to do some of the things you're talking about in Arizona where I led the organization we spent a great deal of our resources on trace there was a program called trace where we actually and when there was a really bad traffic accident or whatever and especially if there was a lot of liability associated with it we spent investigative resources tracking back where that individual or those individuals last drank and we held that place responsible for from a legal standpoint for their contribution to the accident you know it's a unique kind of legal maneuvering to get that done but we were able to get it done in some really big cases but I can tell you that we're there are many ways to address some of these issues even from an ID standpoint the technology associated with identifying false IDs for instance that's out there but the resources to acquire those at technology is in many cases nonexistent there is research that has been done on some of these questions which pretty much confirms what Mr. Oliver has just said Dramshop liability laws in states do motivate restaurant owners and bar owners to be more vigilant about people checking age and refusing service what you really need and research has shown this that training in and of itself of bar personnel is insufficient even house policies are insufficient you need enforcement you need the cop coming around and enforcing the laws you need compliance checks and things like that research has shown that the concentration of alcohol outlets in a small geographic area like Fordham are the concentration contributes far and away more to the number of alcohol problems than just the amount of alcohol served in and of itself it just acts as a magnet for people coming together that's just drinking so when you see what's happened in Boston with their combat zone in the 70's and 80's when they got rid of the combat zone a lot of other problems went away and we've learned a lot by studying these natural variations in increased availability and reduced availability we know enough now how to use alcohol regulation to prevent these excessive instances of alcohol problems Jerry you were talking about last night a specific example in Arizona where you were attempting when you were the alcohol commissioner attempting to require better training for those who serve alcohol and then the alcohol industry basically came in and had that rule watered down to some degree can you talk about that some of these issues just one of many interesting dilemmas we were faced with we wanted to strengthen the training of the servers and a number of different venues including not just liquor stores but drug stores that sell grocery stores that sell alcohol and you have sometimes young people that are checking people out through a grocery store and they're selling alcohol to somebody this underage because they're not even checking the license or they're not checking the identification and so we raised that the requirement that everyone in a particular environment had to be somewhat trained on the liquor laws of the state of Arizona and it turned out that we had some opposition to that of having the manager of the store or of the venue trained and the manager then became responsible for making sure that the people underneath them doing a shift or doing a day's work hours that they were at least exposed and trained at some level but it was a minimum level not the level that we were satisfied with and again I had mentioned in my comments earlier that it's really important to work not only say that they want strong regulation but that the industry step up in many ways to make sure that that happens. Now in some cases I was really impressed with what Steve had to say this morning Steve Higginbotham had to say from Arkansas I was really impressed with the things that they were doing in support of that is not universal many times we really want strong regulation but we're not going to step up to really support that and the director or the ABC director step forward to in the budgeting process. We've got just a few more minutes and I know there are quite a few more questions so let's do a lightning round here please keep your question very short and we'll take up maybe three more if we can and then answer them all at once. Since there's such opposition to consolidation have you guys made comments to regulators or legislators individually as a group do you plan to make comments as a group? I mean it's a disparate group but making similar arguments conclusions. Okay next question. I represent nearly 20,000 on and off-premise beverage licensees bars taverns, package stores throughout the country so a quick comment and then a quick question with regard to the industry being involved in public health I guess I see it a little bit differently. I think the industry and especially my members are leaders in their communities with charitable causes and civic organizations and they play an important role in public safety which I think goes hand in hand with public health. They look at more IDs probably every day than your average police officer and they're the last line of defense against a lot of underage access or other misuse of alcohol. You look at safe ride in Wisconsin with regard to what they do and what the Tavern League of Wisconsin provides in terms of safe rides home and preventing drunk driving is just one example. So I think that there's a public-private partnership that can exist there and be beneficial. My question and it's based largely on what Mr. Baber had to say today and I direct it to him but I put it towards the entire group is can each of you say one positive thing or can you identify one positive thing about the beverage alcohol industry because there seems to be a lot of sentiment that the industry is doing a lot wrong. I see it as doing a lot right. I know our members provide 1.5 million jobs billions in economic activity wages, taxes and other benefits. I'm wondering if I can challenge you to say something positive about the industry. Thank you. Great. And we have any further questions? All right. Panel, the question is yours. Well, let me just jump in on that issue. I had mentioned the work that the center does and our symposiums and I want to, if we've gave the impression that there's nothing positive going on in the industry, that's definitely not true. The symposiums that we host are sponsored by the industry and many times they're at the table and helping to come up with solutions or at least examining policies and supporting policies. I think what we're attempting to do here though at least from my perspective is to say that, hey, look, there needs to be more dialogue there needs to be more thought. Really serious thought given to some of the decisions that are being made are some of the initiatives that are eroding away some of the standards that we've had in the industry for many, many years in the last 80 years and that's the point that I really want to make and want to drive home. Yeah. As far as saying things positive or negative about the alcohol industry I don't want to be misinterpreted what I say and what we've reported in our book is pretty much what we found when we look at activities strategies, interventions policies that the industry has facilitated or supported or opposed and we then look at the evidence so safe rides programs, something the industry supports there's no evidence that that has an effect on population rates of alcohol related traffic accidents. We know though that there are a number of policies in the drunk driving area that the industry often opposes that have a direct effect on late night traffic fatalities. The industry could be very effective and I think the public health community would support efforts to lower the alcohol content of alcoholic beverages. It happened with distilled spirits when there was a shift to lighter spirits from about an average of 41 percent down to 38 percent that happened spontaneously and benefited from it because their tax rates were lower and the shift to light beer had some advantages in that respect because light beer had less alcohol in it. That's a simple thing that the industry could be congratulated for if across the board instead of promoting extreme beers and promoting Mike's hard lemonade and beverages that are targeted at young people with higher alcohol content for the specific purpose of having higher alcohol content if they tried something different I think they would be applauded. So we've got to talk about the evidence that supports policies and if it doesn't support the policies that the industry supports that's their problem not the people who are evaluating the evidence. I would just add that the focus of our of Tim's piece in the Washington Monthly and I think the general focus of the consolidation issues that New America has focused on is not on the individual proprietorships and retail outlets there's much that we can talk about there but on the producers of beer and alcohol and in a sense their control of your members they're dictating the market in which you have to operate their manipulation of the rules under which you have to operate and if anything the end result of a strengthened three tier system and a system in which local communities and health professionals and state legislatures can make decisions about what's best and not best for their community which I would think over the long haul strength in the hand of the retail sector and so so anyway I just wanted to point that out ladies and gentlemen thank you very very much for coming oh well I think that to your question right the the beef here is with consolidation but if there's others who might want to be able to I mean I guess just to address your question I think what we've done here today is speak to legislatures there's a reason that we put this article in the Washington Monthly and the reason that we're hosting this event I imagine that we have if not spoken directly to legislatures we've spoken to people who deal with them directly so hopefully they've heard to go with the other one to say something positive about the beverage industry I mean I think everything that you said is accurate is true those are positives particularly on the entrepreneurial aspect of it that said absolutely nothing about enforcing the three tier laws would do anything to reduce those positive impacts so I don't know that they're connected questions alright with that I want to thank everybody for coming thank the new America Foundation and thank our panel