Wine Sellers' Prediction Of Internet-Enabled Teen Winos Comes Up Empty

from the who-knew? dept

Thu, Aug 10th 2006 11:44am — Mike Masnick

It's always fun when industry groups who are clearly trying to protect a business model under threat come up with scare mongering quotes to try to get politicians to block out new competitors with new business models. For years, many states had protectionist laws when it came to online wine sales. Most of these were designed to protect the local wine sellers -- but, of course, the public spin was that it was all about "protecting the children." Last year, of course, the Supreme Court knocked down the most protectionist of these laws. So, now that it's been a year, if the wine sellers were right, we should be hearing stories of teens ordering wine all the time. Unfortunately for them, a new study shows that teens really don't seem to care much about ordering wine online. Perhaps the times have changed, but when I was a teen, wine wasn't exactly the alcoholic beverage of choice among my friends. Plus, you have to take into account that wine deliveries still require signatures, and most teens tend to live at home with parents who might notice an incoming shipment of alcohol. So, you would think this would make those who were screaming about "protecting the children" quiet down -- but, you'd be wrong. Instead, they're still trying to spin this, calling the findings "shocking" and saying that the low number only means it's about to rise rapidly. "This is new, hard evidence that should really shake up this debate about direct sales." No, this is actually new, hard evidence that the problem you've been screaming about isn't a problem at all.

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24 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2006 @ 12:15pm

Yea, teens LOVE wine, with a great assortment of cheeses, pair to accentuate the flavors of the wine

They don’t have kegger parties any more, they have wine tasting whit classical music playing in the background.
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DittoBox, 10 Aug 2006 @ 12:28pm

What's that old saying?
That if you echo a lie long enough, you'll soon believe it's true?
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WineTastingToTheMax, 10 Aug 2006 @ 12:53pm

Re:
You mean you didn't have wine tasting parties with classical music playing in the background when you were a teen?

You sure did miss out on some good times... :P~ (
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WineTastingToTheMax, 10 Aug 2006 @ 12:55pm

umm...
well... sorry, my little arrow was misconstrued as an html tag, so here we go... :P~ (emoticon representation of a teen spitting out wine at such an event)
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jsnbase, 10 Aug 2006 @ 12:57pm

At least everybody's avoiding scaremongering.
"While online sales of alcohol have not yet been a big part of the addiction problem, parents need to learn what teens already know: that the drug dealer who used to lurk in the seedy side of town is now just an e-mail or a URL away from your home."

So now vintner = drug dealer? Thanks, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesman!
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nunya_bidness, 10 Aug 2006 @ 12:58pm

I love Wine
You mean Boones Farm Strawberry Hill isn't wine?
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Sanguine Dream, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:01pm

So lets get this straight
Instead of going into a store and trying to buy wine while underage these people are saying that they will soon start ordering online in droves? So now teens have to allow for 6-10 weeks delivery time to get their hands on booze...
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WineTastingToTheMax, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:14pm

Re: I love Wine
Of course it's not... now maddog 20/20... THAT'S wine
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Big Huge Dave, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:30pm

Another example of...
...businesses trying to use government to squelch free enterprise and capitalism. This type of thing happens all the time, of course. In New York you can't start a taxi business without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for hard to get licenses.

Heck, try starting a taxi type service anywhere, there are bound to be laws so the unions can "protect" their jobs.

This type of thing goes on all the time, and it's sad.

But it's great when the truth is revealed, as in this great article! :)
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Jason, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:37pm

NBC News Last Night
I was at my parents for dinner last night and the news was on. I don't ever watch the news, but on the NBC Nightly News they did this piece about teens ordering alcohol online.

It was completely ridiculous. They highlighted all of the states that had "made it easier for teens to buy hard alcohol in the past few years".

Of course, the study they were quoting was commissioned and paid for by some licquor wholesaler organization that represents licquor stores. Gee, I'm sure they're completely impartial.

What really drove me nuts was that NBC took the bait. They played it as this huge problem, even providing this stat: "One in 10 teens knows of a friend who has ordered alcohol online". I'm no math wizard, but if one kid in a class of 200 that everyone knows ordered alcohol once, all 200 of those kids would know 1 person who had. It is a completely worthless stat.

All that report did was solidify the reason I don't watch the news.
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- Anonymous Coward, 11 Aug 2006 @ 10:39am
  
  Re: NBC News Last Night
  "Of course, the study they were quoting was commissioned and paid for by some licquor wholesaler organization that represents licquor stores. Gee, I'm sure they're completely impartial.
  
  What really drove me nuts was that NBC took the bait."
  
  Which just serves to underscore how poor critical reasoning skills are among those who present the news. Come on, who among the reasonably intelligent these days *doesn't* know that surveys are inherently skewed by the wording, and that stats are skewed by interpretation? What smart person doesn't realize that the first thing one should check when confronted with such "studies" is the identity of the sponsor?
  
  The only thing I conclude from that is that either A) most news stories like this are bought (like by liquor distributors, in your example), or B) most producers of news stories are idiots. I don't see an option C).
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Dan, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:56pm

Wine online!
What happened to crappy fake IDs, older siblings, and asking perferct strangers in parking lots to buy some for you? Damned internet generation. It used to take me almost a half-hour of intensive work to figure out a way to get booze when I was a kid-- now, apparently, you just click a few buttons and there you go. Kids these days got it soft.
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- MJ, 10 Aug 2006 @ 2:04pm
  
  Re: Wine online!
  Recent studies have shown 30-40% of liquor sales are to minors. I doubt the internet wine trade will put a dent in this profitable business. Few teens can't get whatever they want already. MJ
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  - stephen demczuk, 12 Aug 2006 @ 11:41am
    
    Re: Re: Wine online!
    That'a a CASA stat that was proven totally bogus. Do the math. Actually the stats were 25%-- still utterly stupid.
    
    stephen
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:59pm

Wine...
Yeah buying wine is so much harder than going down to the corner to buy some crack...
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WineTastingToTheMax, 10 Aug 2006 @ 2:01pm

Re: Wine online!
and the funny thing is, it's still quicker to ask the your older brother/sister or the stranger in the parking... as someone mentioned before, there's that killer 6-10 week shipping time...
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- Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2006 @ 2:15pm
  
  Re: Re: Wine online!
  Exactly! You give the nice homeless man some money and five minutes later you have a case of beer.
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anonymous coward, 10 Aug 2006 @ 3:16pm

"You mean Boones Farm Strawberry Hill isn't wine?"

LOL!!! Not in my book! ;-)
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WineMaker, 10 Aug 2006 @ 4:35pm

Wine Distributors ...
are responsible for 98% of teen drinking... see this post:

http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/2006/08/wine_distributo_1.html

BOOYAH!!!
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- Zergboy, 10 Aug 2006 @ 6:04pm
  
  Re: Wine Distributors ...
  Gee that 98% is a BLOG and has a lot of presumtions! Its pretty lame actually cause there is no data, just "Let's say". The title is pretty much just trying to get you to read the crap. They even try to dis techdirt. Tom Wark is a complete Moron. I bet you winemaker is guy who actually made the "blog"
  
  Fucking KNOB!!!
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John Q Public, 10 Aug 2006 @ 5:06pm

$$
Isn't online wine expensive anyway? If you've got $25 bucks for a bottle of wine, give $5 to the wino, he'll get you $20 of beer, kick him down one or two .... its the American way. I was doing that at 16, and I'm long past that age now.

Can I get some Smack online? Now that might be a better deal.
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Wine Guy, 11 Aug 2006 @ 5:19am

Plus, nobody sells the cheap stuff online. So unless these kids are into $100 bottles of Port with $25 shipping because it comes in a wooden crate with straw in it, I don't think there's a problem.

To avoid this, the US could lower the drinking age. Drinking is only cool here among teens because it's illegal.
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WineMaker, 11 Aug 2006 @ 7:58am

Zerg
Has lost his /sarcasm filter. The blog is just a hyberbole to illustrate the complete lack of actual facts in the distributor's "study"

Lighten the f**k up.
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Wine online, 26 Mar 2012 @ 3:43am

Wine online
I have been looking for a rare blog because I am tired of accessing almost the same topic discussed in a website. This blog is actually hitting what I want to expect. I am very glad that you are now providing the information where I am hunting for many days of surfing the net.
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