This should help increase blood alcohol casework…
by Forensic Scientist on Sep.29, 2009, under News, Opinion
The article below was published by the BBC today and it deals with the release by a brewery of a beer that contains 18.2% alcohol by volume. Over the years I have written reports for thousands of drink driving cases. I also spent 8 years at University and many months travelling around overseas. All in all, I’ve seen alot of alcohol consumed and encountered alot of casework involving alcohol. In my experience, people do not consider whether or not a drink contains a high alcohol content when it comes to deciding whether or not to drink it. In fact, the higher the alcohol content, the greater the desire to see how much can be consumed. Rather than slowing down people’s drinking, I can imagine that this beer will have people drinking it to see how much they can manage, particularly in a country of drinkers like Britain – hey presto, successful marketing campaign! Although the brewery says that this beer will encourage people to drink less, because the beer has a higher alcohol content the consumer will still ingest the same weight of alcohol and will still end up totally trollied. It means that less actual volume of liquid will be consumed but people will still get drunk because that’s what they want to do – this is just a novelty way of doing it. There was a big fuss like this when alcopops first hit the market (think of Two Dogs). Still, I guess that if this drink is limited in production then it’ll soon be drunk and the problem will fade…until the next time.
Brewery’s Nanny State beer swipe |
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A brewery has launched a low alcohol beer called Nanny State after being branded irresponsible for creating the UK’s “strongest beer”. Scottish brewer BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, was criticised for Tokyo* which has an alcohol content of 18.2%. Campaigners welcomed the 1.1% alcohol Nanny State but said the name showed a lack of appreciation of the problem The 3,000 limited edition bottles of Tokyo* contained six units of alcohol – twice the recommended daily limit. The company had insisted the £9.99 high strength beer would help tackle the country’s binge-drinking culture, because customers would drink it in smaller quantities.
But Alcohol Focus Scotland had branded that argument “deluded”. BrewDog founder James Watt explained on his blog: “Anyone who knows BrewDog, knows beer, or anyone has more common sense than a common (or garden) gnome will know that the scathing and unrelenting criticism we faced was pretty unjustified. “If logic serves the same people who witch-hunted and publicly slated us should now offer us heartfelt support and public congratulations. “However I fear that this, unfortunately, is an arena devoid of logic and reason.” Nanny State is described as a “mild imperial ale containing more hops per barrel than any other beer ever brewed in the UK”.
It is being made available in limited quantities online for £2.49. Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said of the new Nanny State beer: “This is a positive move which proves that low strength doesn’t compromise quality. “However the name of the beer proves that once again this company is failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the alcohol problem facing Scotland.” BrewDog previously ran into controversy when drinks industry watchdog the Portman Group said its Speedball drink should be withdrawn from sale until its marketing was changed. Speedballing is the name given to combining heroin and cocaine. |
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The name of the beer proves that once again this company is failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the alcohol problem facing Scotland 
