Continued from Part 1 of 2 AJ’s next target is MGD beer. “Probably the most blatantly illegal advertisement came in early 2009, when a new beer called MGD 64 (boasting just 64 calories) sponsored an online fitness program…” With a claim like that it would be nice to know what makes it “illegal,” if not the imagery of “a thin, toned brunette in a party dress, smiling brightly as she showed off the beer-sponsored body that users could obtain if they joined.” With little analysis or evidence, AJ summarily concludes that the marketing is “patently false and misleading.” By contrast, in my opinion, if you are going to strip most of the calories and body away from a beer, down to a puny 64 calories, you darned well have the right to market it as only 64 calories (especially when the same amount of milk, apple juice or regular beer would have 2-3 times as many calories). The “Industry Watchdog” lays much of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at the feet of the industry’s failure to properly regulate itself:  “Finally, the most important reason for the breakdown in regulatory oversight is the continuing charade of voluntary self-regulation.” AJ says the industry has “created a system of codes, largely designed to...

Back in June, Alcohol Justice issued a report entitled “Questionable Health Claims by Alcohol Companies.” I was pretty excited to read this report, because we study such matters closely. Every few weeks I get an exuberant report of a big health claim, on another alcohol beverage product — but it almost always turns out to be a false alarm.

Also, I wanted to give AJ (formerly known as The Marin Institute) a fair chance to persuade me that a lot of companies do in fact go over “the line.” Even though I freely admit that we derive most of our revenue from alcohol beverage companies, I like to think we are fair and open-minded enough to agree with a strong and well-made point.

The report tends to say a large number of alcohol beverage companies are running roughshod over consumers, with phony health claims, and with the rules either insufficient or largely ignored. AJ suggests the rules are “constantly being violated.”

These advertising practices are legally tenuous, morally unsound, and potentially dangerous. … Using health messages to sell products that can cause such widespread harm is not only unethical, it’s illegal, and yet the regulatory system has failed miserably to protect the American public....

At the moment, I am not having a pleasant or a magnificent week (despite the above exhortation). I can’t get any work done. Because all or almost all of TTB’s various online systems have been altogether unavailable for the past several days. TTB provided plenty of advance notice, such as the above, explaining that all such systems will be down for maintenance during all or part of five consecutive days, from November 10th to November 14th. But still, this is an awfully long time for a critical system to be unavailable. I can not even imagine Amazon, Facebook, craigslist, or Gmail going down for a few hours, let alone a few days — without a firestorm. Is TTB’s system really a whole lot less crucial to the affected industries? Should the maintenance really take so long or happen so often? Can’t the government find a way to do maintenance in the background, without blocking thousands of regular users? On a happier note, the systems do not seem to go down unexpectedly, or crash, very often at all, in our experience. This may be due in large part to careful and robust maintenance. But the scheduled maintenance occurs fairly often and for large blocks of time. I think it was just a few weeks ago that the system...

I am pretty sure Pyotr Smirnov never envisioned this. It is peanut butter flavored vodka. It is made by Terressentia Corporation of Charleston, South Carolina. Since I am in Charleston at this very moment, and getting hungry, this seemed like a fine time to feature this product.

Temperance has a similarly flavored product. It is surprising that TTB would allow it to be described as “Peanut Butter Vodka,” unlike the above, without the key term “Flavored” in the middle. TTB is usually more likely to allow terminology like Coconut Rum as compared to Coconut Vodka (partly on the theory that confusion could otherwise arise due to the fact that vodka could possibly be distilled from coconuts, but rum could not). No word yet on vodka distilled from peanuts.

In the above example, it is not sufficient to have VODKA on the front label. Or, the right size. In addition, it needs to be “separate and apart” from other matter. TTB has gotten more strict about this over the years. The above rejection is from a few days ago. The vodka label is from many years ago, to show the movement in the policy, or the enforcement of the policy.

TTB is quite concerned about word placement and proximity. For example, “absinthe” must appear next to other words, as here. Vodka may not, as above. It is important to understand the various proximity rules, because they can lead to unpleasant surprises, and because they extend from spirits to beer and wine. It is probably not okay to bury the word “chardonnay” amidst a sentence singing its praises. It is probably not okay, in most instances, to affix several words before and after BEER.

The rule can be difficult because it’s not always clear how much separation is required (A few spaces? A few line breaks?). It’s not always clear why some terms get treated differently (such as “Silver Rum” or “Cream Liqueur”). It is easy enough to add an extra class/type statement to the front...