For Health & Happiness

If anything bothers the liquor industry more than teetotalers, it is the legal taboos that restrict its advertising copy. While many an industry from cereals to soap touts its product as a boon to health or happiness, distillers are barred by Internal Revenue's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division from using "any advertisement which creates the impression that distilled spirits will contribute to the mental or physical well-being of the consumer, or may be consumed, even in moderate quantities, without any detrimental effect." Last week there were signs that the industry is getting around the law with ads discreetly plugging the benefits of liquor.

Liquor trade journals hailed Distillers Corp.-Seagrams as a trail blazer for its ads claiming that "Clear Heads Call for Calvert Taste." Its Calvert subsidiary ran the ads despite the Government's disapproval--based on the ad's implicit promise of freedom from hangover. But it later changed the wording to "Clear Heads Agree: Calvert Tastes Better" after a threat of formal charges. While Seagrams nervously denies that it is trying to make a test case for the industry, Vice President

Victor A. Fischel says: "We believe that we ought to have the right to tell any true story in advertising our product. The Government says we cannot make any claim to therapeutic values, regardless of truth. That is an odd position, considering the fact that the only liquor that could be sold legally during Prohibition was liquor for medicinal purposes."

"Pour a Smile." Other distillers are also testing the Government's regulations with restrained ads that point up the attractions of liquor. In its most recent campaign Bacardi rum (which last year broke industry tradition by using a woman in a liquor ad) urged readers: "When tensions build up--take time to relax." National Distillers adopted the slogan "Sip a Little Sunshine, Pardner" for its Old Sunny Brook Brand whisky, recently changed it to "Pour Yourself a Smile. Neighbor" when the Government frowned. The French National Association of Cognac Producers earlier ran a series of U.S. ads describing cognac as the "harbinger of good appetite, a gentle agent to relax tension, a pleasant inducer of euphoria." Though it got no formal Government complaints (the association is technically outside the jurisdiction of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division), it stopped the ads in order to protect its U.S. distributors.

Ammunition for the new ads is being provided by Licensed Beverages Industries Inc., industry public relations organization, which is campaigning to give "the true, scientifically based facts" about liquor. It is ready to distribute a pamphlet quoting such prominent doctors and clergymen as Dr. Robert Goodhart, director of the National Vitamin Foundation ("cirrhosis of the liver is actually caused by nutritional deficiencies ... is not peculiar to alcoholism, but occurs in total abstainers"), Dean James A. Pike of Manhattan's St. John the Divine Cathedral ("a martini before dinner can put a new face on things"), and the late Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University ("Moderate steady drinkers exhibited somewhat lower rates of mortality and greater expectation of life than did abstainers"). Heart Specialist Dr. Paul Dudley White is also cited for his remark that an ounce or two of whisky, brandy or rum is valuable in relieving or even preventing attacks of angina pectoris.

"Fit, Keen & Zestful." But the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division, to which the liquor industry has voluntarily submitted ads for approval since 1936, has a memory that stretches far back. After representing liquor as a cure for everything from menstrual disorders to tuberculosis in the early part of the century, distillers claimed after Repeal that whisky "leaves the brain fit, keen and zestful tomorrow." "Pick-me-up in midmorning and again in late afternoon," urged one whisky ad. Another claimed that drinking whisky was the way for a young man to get a better job--and tried to prove it with case histories.

No distiller has risked a court test of the ad regulations, largely because the Government could take away his license during litigation. But the industry is itching to offset claims by Drys that alcohol is always harmful, hopes to get a more liberal interpretation of the law. Said Seagrams' Fischel, in what sounded like a rallying call: "Just because there are a number of boisterous Drys does not mean that we cannot tell America that there is a virtue, that there is a benefit to orderly, sane drinking on a moderate scale. We believe that we must go out and promote, our products on this basis. We cannot stand by and let our sales lag far behind the national economy."

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