If there's a positive model for liquor sites, it's probably Labatt's (www.labatt.com). True, the Blue Lounge chat area requires registering more personal data than the IRS would ever need, but the presentation is smartly unglitzy, and, unlike any other beer site, the responsible-drinking articles are up top where you can find them.
The CME also overreaches in its criticism of several pro-smoking sites. Since the tobacco companies tactfully maintain dull corporate Web pages, the center is forced to highlight The Smoker's Homepage (xochi.tezcat.com/~smokers/), with its vast compendium of no-apologies articles ("Secondhand Smoke: The Big Lie") and links. But this private site can't be, nor should it be, regulated. That may not be true of Smokin' Joe's (www. smokinjoes.com), a Tennessee store that allows you to order cigars online without consistently checking for proof of age, but what possessed the CME to cite the obsessive, small-time Simpsons vs. Smoking (www.snpp.com/guides/smoking. simpsons.html), an Australian site that lists every single character in every single episode of The Simpsons seen with tobacco in hand?
Notably, the report doesn't mention Absolut's site (www.absolutvodka.com), which over the last few years, without ever directly shilling vodka, has hosted some of the most creative multimedia projects to hit cyberland. That notion of "sponsored programming" — in Absolut's case, with strong artistic credibility — represents a possible way out for the liquor sites the white paper finds so heinous. The CME, interestingly, may be too sober to see it.
