Should cities promote alcohol?

A woman asked me the other day, do I think it’s right that more and more Valley cities are setting up “Beer Gardens” at city celebrations? Is it right for Valley cities, in other words, to endorse and support the consumption of alcoholic beverages at citysponsored events? The person asking the question said she has personal experience with alcohol and what it can do to people. Her mom had abused alcohol for several years before regaining her sobriety, and she had an ex-husband who had abused the stuff. Life at home was often unpleasant. These days, if you look at almost every RGV city event/ festival, whether it be a New Year’s Eve celebration, Fourth of July party, St. Patrick Day’s celebration, Livestock Show, Borderfest bash, you name it, beer is being served and consumed by the gallons. And often, in a selfserving way, one or more of the Valley’s beer distributors is a major sponsor of these events. So what do I think? Should cities allow the consumption of alcohol at municipal events? Well, first of all, there’s little doubt how alcohol can destroy lives when consumed in an immoderate fashion. Nor is there any doubt as to its addictive quality. My biological father died at 53 from cirrhosis of the liver. So you might say, booze robbed me of my dad. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say, his inability to drink it in moderate fashion was the ultimate cause of his demise. Of course, he and my mom split when I was 3, and she never let me see him again. But still, when he died, I was 17, so we could still presumably have had a lot of good years together. By all accounts, he was never a falling-down drunk. But the booze destroyed his liver nonetheless. Addictive genes also run on my mom’s side of the family. My lovely grandmother, Grannie Irene, was an alcoholic. When I spent summers with her as a kid, she stayed sober. But my older cousins tell me the horror stories. They saw how she’d get stumbling-down drunk. And they saw how her no-good husband, who had a mistress and kids on the side, no less, would bring home a bottle of whiskey and plunk it down on the kitchen counter just to be cruel, knowing she couldn’t control the urge to dip into the sauce. Nice guy. Of course, when I knew him as a kid, I knew him as Grandpa Sydney (really my stepgrandfather), not knowing what a monster he really was when he dropped the mask. Grannie Irene died a miserable death of ovarian cancer at 62. How much the booze had to do with it, who knows. But if you GOOGLE “ovarian cancer,” there appears to be a causal link simply because consumption of alcohol increases the levels of estrogen in women, which is linked to the deadly disease. As a newspaper reporter, back when I was writing the police blotter in the 1980s and early ‘90s, I can’t count the number of police reports I read in which the man of the house came home drunk and beat the wife and kids. Nor can I recount the number of police reports I read that dealt with DWIs and the injuries they caused. In an ironic twist, the drunk driver usually walked away from the wreck unscathed while his victims lay bleeding and/or dying. Today, as a society, cities outlaw the consumption of cigarettes in public, but promote and pump up the consumption of alcohol. Go figure. Back to those early police reports: never once did I read of a guy coming home and beating up his wife because he had smoked too many cigarettes. Never once did I read of a fatal crash because the driver had smoked more than a pack of Marlboros. But back to the original question: do I think it’s right that cities support and promote the consumption of alcohol at municipal celebrations? No, I don’t. For one thing, I don’t understand the issue of liability. Let’s say some guy attends a city function, drinks too much beer, and then heads home and crashes into a car carrying two parents and six kids and wipes out the entire family. Is the city not going to be somehow liable for that? Sure, they all have insurance, but there’s the issue of a deductible, much less the issue of guilt, not to mention bad PR. And then there’s the moral factor. How does it help a recovering alcoholic to attend a city function and run into a Beer Garden? If anything, it seems the beer distributors are winning the war in favor of increased alcohol consumption. Up in Austin, beer is now being served at college basketball and baseball games. But not football games. The football deal was going to happen last year because UTAustin Athletic Director Steve Patterson was pushing for it. But (outgoing) UT Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, MD, put a stop to it. But will his successor stay the course? Who knows. Patterson, by the way, is all for the sale of beer and wine at college football games. In a story published last month by KXAN TV, the UTAustin AD had this to say: “For us, the key is that our fans should feel like they’re having a good experience for where they invest their time and their emotion and (their) money.” Meaning, presumably, sports fans can’t have a good time unless they’re drinking some alcohol? Coke, water and iced tea just won’t cut it for fans looking to have a “real good time?” At the heart of it all – no big surprise – is the almighty dollar. In the same KXAN story, Patterson admitted as much: “It’s made us some money, I’m not going to deny that.” And no doubt giant beer companies like Anheuser-Busch are pumping enough money into the UT system to make beer sales at college football games an eventual slam dunk. Just like Valley beer distributors are pumping money into city events, looking to pump up their respective revenues. And quite a bit of that money lands in city coffers. I’m not saying that alcohol should be banned totally or we should return to the days of alcohol prohibition. I drink beer myself in moderation. I enjoy a cold brew after a hard day’s work. But after this column, I’m no longer going to mention it in future columns, because the same thought has occurred to me in the past: when I write a column and mention drinking a Heinekens, what’s that doing to the poor alcoholic out there trying to abstain and remain sober? It can’t be helping. THE NIGHT-TIME CRASH Back in 1995, my wife Jan and I got one of those phone calls no parent ever wants to get. Middle of the night, 3 a.m., Jan’s 23-year-old daughter, my stepdaughter, Candice, had gotten into a terrible car crash. She and friends had been out drinking. Candice had done the right thing by turning over her car keys to her friend because she knew she’d had too much to drink. But she was too inebriated to realize that her friend was in no better shape. She was drunk too. Less than a half mile from the bar, the friend turned in front of a speeding vehicle, which struck my step-daughter’s car on the passenger side, causing her the worst of the injuries. Car totaled. Blood all over the interior. Two or more weeks in the ICU with an intubation tube stuck down her throat. We had to lay aside the newspaper business, put our lives on hold, take our son out of school, who was eight at the time, and drive up to the Beaumont hospital. Spent days in the ICU, holding her hand, while she was in a coma, praying she wouldn’t die or suffer irreparable brain damage. At the time, neither we or the doctors had a clue as to whether or not she was going to ever wake up. Thankfully, she pulled through. So let’s just say, while I still drink beer in moderation, I have no love for alcohol or the harm it does to people and those whom they love. JAN’S NOTE: Unfortunately, I was unable to locate by press time the color photos of the car my daughter was in when the accident occurred. Or, rather, what remained of the car. The photos were published years ago in black and white. However, I now have the capability of publishing them in color. As soon as I find them, they will be published again. It's my hope that seeing my daughter's blood all over the interior of the car will make cities as well as individuals give more thought and concern to the possibly devastating and potentially fatal consequences of serving alcohol at public events. Somehow, though, I seriously doubt that anyone will give it a thought other than: “That won't happen to me!” Well, if it can happen to me, it can happen to you. I strongly suggest you do think about what can happen to you, your family, or someone's innocent family who just happens to get involved in a drunk-driving accident caused by the consumption of alcohol at a public event.