by George A. Hacker

About the author: George A. Hacker directs the alcohol policies project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization that promotes alcohol abuse prevention policies.

After more than 50 years of honoring its pledge not to advertise distilled spirits in the broadcast media, the liquor industry lost its grip on good corporate citizenship in November 1996 and abandoned the voluntary ban.

As recently as 1993, the president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) had described the ban to a Senate committee as part of the liquor industry’s “responsibility to combat alcohol abuse.” Now DISCUS has begun passing off liquor ads as consumer education. [In 1998] it ran a TV ad in the Washington, DC, market promoting both the alcohol...