PR Week describes how the Distilled Spirits Council, an alcohol industry trade group, handled a "crisis" when the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) released a study claiming that children consume 25% of alcohol sold in the US. "Such a study could do irreparable harm to the alcohol industry," says PR Week. DSC pored through the raw data used in CASA's study, rerunning the numbers "in hope of finding some miscalculation" and ready to jump if there was a mistake. "And just to be safe, Coleman [DSC communications VP] started digging for dirt on the CASA," PR Week writes. As it turns out, CASA had made an error with the data. Instead of 25%, it turns out that "only" 10-15% of alcohol sold in the US is consumed by 12- to 20-year-olds. DCS spun that statistic as good news. After reviewing CASA's history for the past ten years, DCS also found a couple of previous statistical errors, and fed the errors as a "scandal" to reporters. "In the end, the coverage of the 'scandal' [CASA's mistake] outweighed the coverage of the study itself," PR Week boasted.