The Illuminated Donkey

Teen Drinking Report Flawed by Miguel Llanos, MSNBC

Authors admit key figure was way off, but insist adding other factors and making stuff up would lead to same conclusion.

Feb. 27 — The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has acknowledged that its alarming claim — that youths ages 12 to 20 consume 25 percent of all alcohol in the United States — was based on a flawed analysis, but said the statistical discrepancy was due to underreporting by the teens being surveyed and a surprisingly high number of "complete losers and dorks" in the sample. The alcohol industry first challenged the claim, and the federal agency whose survey was used for the think tank’s report studied the data at MSNBC.com’s request and agreed the consumption figure was actually 11.4 percent.

Center President Joseph Califano Jr., a former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, defended his group’s decision not to make the adjustment. "If the kid’s parents are in the living room and you are in the kitchen, the odds of getting a really solid answer are slim. So there’s a tremendous underestimate in reporting," Califano said. "Plus, some of the kids out there are unbelievable geeks. There was this one 17-year-old who told us that he never drank `because it was illegal.’ Well, I nearly lost it right there. Let me just say that within two hours this dorkus malorkus had both a fake ID and a six-pack of Piel’s, so I figured that had to add two or three percent to the consumption figure right there."

Okay, I made a bunch of that stuff up (I included a link to the real story, should you care), but that puts me about even with the NCASA as I figure. Is there anybody out there who doubts that this group knew exactly what they were doing, and issued the report with the inflated statistics knowing full well that it would guarantee heavy first-day news coverage, while the inevitable rebuttals and actual numbers would receive a fraction of the attention?