Columbia U. Alcohol Study Doubles The Numbers; Misleading Study Just The Latest Distortion from CASA/Califano, Says Group

2/27/2002

From: Mike Burita of the Center for Consumer Freedom, 202-463-7112

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 -- The announcement by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) that "underage drinkers account for 25 percent of all the alcohol consumed in the U.S." is shocking -- in its inaccuracy, according to the Center for Consumer Freedom.

The Columbia Center's president, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., is seeing double: According to this morning's New York Times, in an article entitled "Disturbing Finding on Youth Drinkers Proves to Be Wrong," the real proportion of alcohol consumed by teenagers was less than half the Columbia Center's figure.

In an unforgivable deception, the Columbia Center inflated the analysis of the U.S. government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), on which the Columbia Center claimed to base its report, by 119 percent. Within hours of the release of the Columbia Center's report, SAMHSA released a statement with the lower number based on accurate statistical sampling.

This is not the first time the Columbia Center and Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Carter, have been exposed for factual distortion:

-- The Department of Health and Human Services, successor to the branch Califano himself once headed, blasted a 1994 Columbia Center report on welfare and substance abuse as "seriously flawed." That report said one in four (which seems to be a favorite Columbia Center proportion) women who receive welfare were alcohol or drug abusers. HHS's real number was 4.5 percent, and criticized the Columbia Center's overly broad definition of "abuser." Said HHS: "Readers of the headlines need to understand the fine print."

-- A Columbia Center report on "binge drinking" among college students, also from 1994, cited statistics linking alcohol with sexually transmitted diseases and campus rape. According to Forbes MediaCritic magazine's Winter 1995 issue, many of the "statistics" cited were merely conjecture by health educators at various universities. One number even came from a student handout that was "not intended to reflect any kind of original research." Another statistic came from a misquote published in a student newspaper. Said Professor David Hanson of the State University of New York at Potsdam, who has studied college alcohol use for over 20 years: "If I were teaching a research class, I would use this CASA report as an example of what not to do."

The Columbia Center has learned nothing from these past failures. According to the Times, for its new study the Columbia Center "acknowledged that it had not applied the usual statistical techniques" to derive the inflated number, "which would then have been far smaller." But even after the SAMHSA statement and the Times report, the Columbia Center study "Teen Tipplers: America's Underage Drinking Epidemic" remains the lead item on the Columbia Center's website this morning.

The 1994 Columbia Center "binge drinking" study was reported on by USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and other major publications. MediaCritic wrote that "USA Today trusted CASA as a source because of Califano's involvement," lending his credibility to an inaccurate report.

It is heartening that this time around, it took The New York Times and other major information sources just hours to skeptically examine the Columbia Center's latest manipulation. While Califano was again involved, by now, neither he nor the Columbia Center have any credibility left to exploit.

The Center for Consumer Freedom represents a coalition of restaurant and tavern operators standing up against the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, vegetarian activists and meddling bureaucrats who "know what's best for you." To schedule an interview contact Mike Burita at 202-463-7112.