BATTLE BREWS OVER ANTI-ALCOHOL AD PLAN

WASHINGTON - This is your brain. This is your brain on booze.

That's the ad line that could crop up, depending on who wins a political
fight that California vintners are just now learning about. Within days, a
key House committee will have to unscramble the dispute over whether the
government should broaden its anti-drug campaign to target alcohol.

"Since wine is not an illegal substance, and since wine has been consumed as
the natural accompaniment to meals for thousands of years, it would be
surprising to find it included in drug legislation," Lee Nordlund, marketing
director for the Manteca-based Delicato Family Vineyards, said Monday.

The federal drug czar's office spends $195 million a year on anti-drug ads,
including the memorable "this is your brain on drugs" video that compares a
drug user's brain to an egg frying in a pan. The drug czar's current
campaign sidesteps alcohol, the No. 1 intoxicant of choice among young
people. That would change under a measure before the House Appropriations
Committee.

The Treasury Department's fiscal 2000 funding bill, as approved by a House
subcommittee, would let the federal drug-control office target alcohol in
its ad campaign. Anti-drinking advocates say it's about time, since twice as
many Americans die from alcohol-related causes as from illegal drugs.

"We will not sit back and be quiet while the alcohol industry works
endlessly to ensure that alcohol and underage drinking are excluded from the
most comprehensive anti-drug advertising campaign in U.S. history," Karolyn
Nunnallee, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said Monday.

One in five U.S. teen-agers younger than 17 drank alcohol within the past
month, according to the most recent government survey. That was twice as
many as the number who had smoked marijuana.

Alcohol abuse and alcoholism cost the United States an estimated $148
billion annually, the National Institute on Drug Abuse calculates. Drug
abuse and dependence cost the country an estimated $98 billion annually.

But should a program established to target illegal drugs now broaden its
approach?

Drug czar Barry McCaffrey cautioned Monday that the ad change would "dilute
the focus of a successful media campaign" that targets 102 cities, adding it
would be a "serious mistake" to change the ad focus without a funding
increase. He noted that privately funded ads, provided as matching
contributions to the federal ads, have attacked drinking.

The National Beer Wholesalers Association is trying to kill the
subcommittee's alcohol ad provision when the full House panel meets this
week. The group has been successful in the past. The 1988 bill setting up
the Office of National Drug Control Policy specifically excludes wine, beer
and liquor from the office's jurisdiction.

The San Francisco-based Wine Institute hasn't formally convened to oppose
the new proposal, but the industry, like beer brewers, is skeptical.

"We have some concerns that by throwing alcohol into the mix, is there a
mixed message as a result?" Wine Institute senior vice president Robert P.
Koch, the industry's top lobbyist, said Monday. "We are different. We are
not an illegal substance."

One House member championing a revised new ad campaign is Los Angeles
Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard.

Customarily, though, California lawmakers have backed the state's $5.9
billion-a-year wine industry. These lawmakers may have to confront the issue
if the House Appropriations Committee can't stop the provision this week.