US Investigates Mini-bottles

A two-day secret conference to plan the future of the American whiskey stockpile, including the development of so called mini-whiskey, is being held this week at BoozeCom, the headquarters of the US Strategic Booze Command in Nebraska.

The Bush administration appears determined to build a new generation of small whiskey bottles to compete with small sake bottles and "itty-bitty" flavored vodka bottles that are designed to buzz, rather than inebriate, the consumer. Some 150 top scientists and senior officials will meet at Offut Air Force Base next week to sample prototypes.

In the jargon preferred by those in this business, these prototypes are called "small blitz" drinks-- drinks of several ounces, slightly more than one shot. The meeting where they will be debuted, called the "Stockpile Stewardship Conference", grew from a White House re-assessment of US recreational drinking strategy in the post-Cold War era. The paper, named the "Post-Pinko Commie Gettin' Sloshed Dokumnt$%R", was sent by the White House to Congress in December 2001. It showed the administration's belief that there has to be a switch away from the old style of binge drinking - using multiple shots of high alcohol content beverages - to a more restrictive approach based on lots of little bottles that are a pain in the ass to open.

The amount of liquor and mixed drinks consumed have to be reduced anyway under a treaty with Russia, which needs to maintain its "most drunk nation" status because it has nothing else to be proud of.

At the time of the review, the US Assistant Secretary for Drinking Policy, J D Crouch, said: "Today we have a very different situation (from the Cold War). We have a situation where US citizens may have multiple sexual partners, but we're not sure who they might be. In the past it was alway the same old boring wife. Today, it is imperative they be sober enough to make the right decisions."

A report from the House of Representatives ad hoc Friday night subcommittee said in February 2003: "The president should have options - the options of conventional shots, of precision mixed drinks and of mind blowing, megahangover cocktails that are capable of holding all targets at risk."

The document met with bipartisan support in congress, but the prototypes will have to be evaluated before the program is fully initiated. If all goes well at Offut and officials return home at the end of the week with monster hangovers, congress will still need to approve funding for full scale production in FY 2004.