On April 12 1989, ABC aired a shocking episode of its popular sitcom, Growing Pains. A close friend of the show's teenaged lead characters was seriously injured in a drunk driving crash, after having "just a few drinks." Hospitalized with his injuries, the youngster vowed to change his ways, grateful for his "second chance." Then, in a dramatic twist, the teenager suddenly died. As Daily Variety explained, the show's producers had decided to sacrifice the character to "break the typical sense of denial by young people that they're anything but immortal."

The "Second Chance" episode of Growing Pains is one of many recent instances when prime-time television was used to educate the public about substance abuse. This particular program was part of a major campaign launched in 1988 by Harvard University's School of Public Health. Its goal is to use entertainment TV to alert viewers to the dangers of drunk driving and to promote the idea of choosing a "designated driver"— someone who purposely abstains from drinking in order to safely drive drinking friends home. From its outset, the Harvard Alcohol Project has been enthusiastically embraced by the television industry. With strong support from such industry heavyweights as former NBC chairman Grant Tinker and former president of CBS Frank Stanton, Harvard's Dr. Jay Winsten, who directs the project, has gotten cooperation from dozens of producers and writers in Hollywood, who have agreed to insert a line of dialogue, feature a designated driver poster, or in some cases, devote an entire episode to the drunk driving issue.

"For young people, entertainment television serves as an 'electronic classroom,' where lessons are taught each week through the actions of its characters."
—Kathryn C. Montgomery, Mass Communication and Public Health

By December 1990, Harvard reported that messages about drunk driving had appeared in 95 episodes, including such popular TV shows as All My Children, The Cosby Show, Head of the Class, and The Young and the Restless. The press has applauded the Harvard effort, with featured stories in many major media. The New York Times endorsed the project on its editorial page. ABC News profiled it in a special piece on the evening news, praising this "marriage of a simple idea and the power of TV." The success of the Harvard campaign would seem to indicate that entertainment TV is an effective forum for educating the public about alcohol abuse. Television is at the center of mainstream cultural activity, reaching large portions of the public with a constant stream of programming.

As a popular art form, TV has unique power to engage viewers in ways that news and public affairs programs do not. For young people, it serves as an "electronic classroom," where lessons are taught each week through the actions of its characters. But there are limitations to entertainment television's ability to effectively educate the public about alcohol. As we'll see from the brief overview that follows, the dramatic constraints that influence television's handling of all social issues have shaped the presentation of alcohol abuse in ways that often oversimplify this complex issue. Even more critical, however, are the conflicting roles played by television as a purveyor of information on the one hand, and a vehicle for advertising on the other. Though the most highly publicized such effort in recent years, the Harvard Alcohol Project is by no means the first attempt to enlist the help of Hollywood in warning the public about the dangers of alcohol abuse. Since the '70s, public health advocates have been fairly successful at getting messages about alcohol woven into entertainment programs.

A decade ago, the U.S. Public Health Service was instrumental in convincing the producers of MASH, to do an episode where hard-drinking Hawkeye struggles with his alcohol dependence. Representatives from the service were also successful at reducing— for a time at least— the amount of "gratuitous drinking" in a number of prime-time shows. In the mid-'80s, the producers of Cagney & Lacey worked with the National Council on Alcoholism to develop a long-term storyline culminating in Christine Cagney's decision to join Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1987, former first lady Betty Ford was the subject of a TV movie which dramatized her descent into the depths of alcoholism and her family's courageous intervention to force her into a treatment center.

As these examples illustrate, alcohol abuse has proven to be compatible with the needs of entertainment programming. It lends itself easily to dramatization, thus providing story material for writers and producers. Simple messages can also be woven into the background of TV shows, with little disruption of plot. And the alcohol issue is relatively "safe," as opposed to such politically divisive topics as abortion or gun control. The incorporation of pro-social messages on drunk driving and alcohol abuse has also served as an effective public relations tool for the TV industry, neutralizing public criticism, deflecting pressure, and in some cases, heading off regulatory efforts. In 1983, when a coalition of public health groups, spearheaded by the D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, proposed legislation that would ban alcohol advertising from radio and TV, the broadcast industry organized a massive counter campaign defeating the plan. The campaign included presenting before Congress excerpts from prime-time programs, featuring anti-alcohol scenes and dialogue.

The television industry considers alcohol abuse so important that it has launched several initiatives of its own. In 1982, the Caucus for Producers, Writers, and Directors issued a "White Paper" urging the creative community to treat alcohol-related issues more responsibly. A year later, an Entertainment Industries Council was set up to "deglamorize drug and alcohol use." EIC has issued periodic guidelines on issues related to substance abuse. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences set up a Substance Abuse Committee in 1986. What kind of job has entertainment television done in educating the public about alcohol abuse? On the one hand, the messages about alcohol which are increasingly peppered throughout programming may help to raise public awareness about the issue. By depicting certain healthy behaviors as normative, entertainment television may also play a role in prevention. If TV characters routinely decline alcohol, viewers may accept such behavior as the appropriate thing to do in their own lives.

"Characters seldom refused a drink and often drank alcohol to face a crisis."
—From a study by Warren Breed and James Defoe, 1982

On the other hand, entertainment television consistently frames the issue of alcohol abuse as a personal problem which can only be solved by individual behavioral change. Parents in prime-time shows frequently lecture their offspring about the importance of resisting peer pressure. But viewers are not likely to see the same TV parents organizing their communities against beer companies which sponsor youth-oriented sporting events. Nor are families on television inclined to complain to local liquor stores about the alcoholic beverages that are purposefully packaged and displayed to look like soft drinks. Alcohol abuse, like other social problems on TV remains "all in the family."

And finally, television gives double messages about alcohol. The scenes and dialogue in the programs are often in conflict with the carefully crafted commercials that punctuate the programming with increasing frequency. So, while characters in popular sitcoms warn each other about the dangers of alcohol abuse and drunk driving, slick ads in other parts of the schedule repeatedly drive home the message that beer and wine are essential to the good life. Such conflicting messages raise serious questions about whether a medium whose primary goal is to promote consumption can really be an effective advocate for public health.