Youth alcohol experiment to go ahead

13 January 2004

AMSTERDAM — Despite vocal protests from health organisations, youth public broadcaster BNN is to press ahead with an experiment aimed at investigating the effects of alcohol on students.

BNN will publish the results in a TV broadcast despite the fact that the Netherlands Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (NIGZ) and the Alcohol Prevention Foundation has requested for the experiment to be abandoned.

The health organisations claim the research is socially unacceptable and ethically irresponsible, nu.nl reported on Tuesday. They also claim it is illegal, but the protests have fallen on deaf ears.

The often controversial BNN recently staved off extinction by increasing its membership numbers above the legal minimum of 150,000. It needed to have sufficient numbers before 1 April 2004 if it was to maintain its allocation of broadcasting time in 2005.

The broadcaster used a campaign motto: “We’re in the shit, so become a member” to get it over the line late last year.

The broadcaster was established by funny man Bart de Graaf, who died in May 2002 after a long-term battle against kidney problems. De Graaf stopped growing from the age of 10 as a result of his illness and spent a large part of his life in hospitals.

But De Graaf transformed his BNN programme — formerly affiliated with Veronica — into a public broadcaster and its debut public programme was aired in 1998. BNN gained approval in 2000 to remain a public broadcaster until 2005.

Subject: Dutch news