The Battle Of The Beers
When it comes to drinking, young males can’t tell the difference between low alcohol and regular strength beer. That’s according to a study by the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research (CARBC). The results of the study, which took place at UVic between August and October 2006, were released in Victoria today.
Using unmarked low alcohol beer (3.8 per cent) compared with regular strength beer (5.3 per cent), CARBC research assistant and UVic graduate student Dave Segal found that most of the 34 young male participants could not tell the difference between the two strengths of beer. As well they reported no differences in how much they enjoyed the occasion or their perceived intoxication. There was, however, a small difference in terms of preferring the taste of the 5.3 per cent beer. The study was supervised and funded by CARBC, and the lower alcohol beer was donated by Victoria’s Spinnakers Gastro Brewpub and GuestHouses (www.spinnakers.com)—Canada’s oldest brewpub and one of the few Canadian microbreweries that makes a lower alcohol beer.
Segal’s findings support CARBC’s recent recommendation that the BC government modify alcohol pricing policies so that drink prices reflect alcohol content by suggesting lower alcohol content beers could be well accepted—if the price was right. Currently pricing encourages consumption of higher alcohol content drinks and it is no surprise that beers with less than four per cent alcohol occupy only 0.2 per cent of the BC beer market, say the researchers.
“New data indicates that there is a growing problem with alcohol in BC and in the nation as a whole,” remarks CARBC Director Dr. Tim Stockwell. “Increased consumption of alcohol has led to increases in cancers, liver diseases, road trauma, violence, birth defects and a host of other causes of death, injury and illness.”
“CARBC’s call to modify alcohol pricing policies is an example of using taxation policy to achieve public policy initiatives, as opposed to simply being tools for revenue generation,” says Spinnakers Owner Paul Hadfield. Hadfield, in support of CARBC’s position, has also committed to lowering the price of his low alcohol products in the very near future.
More information about trends in substance use is available on CARBC’s new BC Alcohol and Other Drug Monitoring Project website, www.AODmonitoring.ca. To view the executive summary of Segal’s study, the centre’s report “Alcohol in British Columbia and Canada: A Case for Liquor Taxes that Reduce Harm,” the most recent CARBC bulletin and CARBC’s submission to the BC government go to http://carbc.ca/. CARBC is a UVic research centre in partnership with UBC, UNBC, SFU and Thompson Rivers University.
Two backgrounders attached.
Click here for the backgrounder.Using unmarked low alcohol beer (3.8 per cent) compared with regular strength beer (5.3 per cent), CARBC research assistant and UVic graduate student Dave Segal found that most of the 34 young male participants could not tell the difference between the two strengths of beer. As well they reported no differences in how much they enjoyed the occasion or their perceived intoxication. There was, however, a small difference in terms of preferring the taste of the 5.3 per cent beer. The study was supervised and funded by CARBC, and the lower alcohol beer was donated by Victoria’s Spinnakers Gastro Brewpub and GuestHouses (www.spinnakers.com)—Canada’s oldest brewpub and one of the few Canadian microbreweries that makes a lower alcohol beer.
Segal’s findings support CARBC’s recent recommendation that the BC government modify alcohol pricing policies so that drink prices reflect alcohol content by suggesting lower alcohol content beers could be well accepted—if the price was right. Currently pricing encourages consumption of higher alcohol content drinks and it is no surprise that beers with less than four per cent alcohol occupy only 0.2 per cent of the BC beer market, say the researchers.
“New data indicates that there is a growing problem with alcohol in BC and in the nation as a whole,” remarks CARBC Director Dr. Tim Stockwell. “Increased consumption of alcohol has led to increases in cancers, liver diseases, road trauma, violence, birth defects and a host of other causes of death, injury and illness.”
“CARBC’s call to modify alcohol pricing policies is an example of using taxation policy to achieve public policy initiatives, as opposed to simply being tools for revenue generation,” says Spinnakers Owner Paul Hadfield. Hadfield, in support of CARBC’s position, has also committed to lowering the price of his low alcohol products in the very near future.
More information about trends in substance use is available on CARBC’s new BC Alcohol and Other Drug Monitoring Project website, www.AODmonitoring.ca. To view the executive summary of Segal’s study, the centre’s report “Alcohol in British Columbia and Canada: A Case for Liquor Taxes that Reduce Harm,” the most recent CARBC bulletin and CARBC’s submission to the BC government go to http://carbc.ca/. CARBC is a UVic research centre in partnership with UBC, UNBC, SFU and Thompson Rivers University.
Two backgrounders attached.
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