TOLEDO (AP) -- Officials at Owens-Illinois Inc. hope people who are used to drinking soda from plastic bottles will be willing to try beer that's packaged the same way.

The Toledo-based company's Continental PET Technologies unit is supplying the bottles to the Miller Brewing Co. of Milwaukee and is working closely with the brewing industry on development of the packaging.

Miller, the nation's second-largest brewer, is testing the bottles at several baseball parks and in the cities of Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas and Norfolk, Va.

''You've got to remember, there is a whole generation of 21- to 28-year-olds out there who have grown up drinking most of their beverages out of plastic bottles,'' Miller spokesman Scott Bussen said.

''Fans really seemed to like them'' when the bottles were introduced at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia this month, said Brian Hastings, a manager for Ogden Entertainment, the park concessionaire.

Hastings said vendors also were impressed because they merely could unscrew the cap and hand the beer to customers without having to first pour it into a plastic cup, as is the practice with canned beer.

Owens-Illinois already is the leading supplier of glass beer bottles nationally.

A survey by the nation's largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, reportedly found that customers have a slight preference for beer in glass bottles but think plastic is superior to aluminum for containing beer.

Advocates of plastic expect sales to be best at sports stadiums, pools, beaches and other areas where glass is a hazard.