www.alkoholpolitik.ch

Last month, I discussed the negative impacts that a nutritional label mandate would have on small producers of alcohol beverages, such as craft brewers. Another side of this issue is the negative impact that prohibiting nutritional labels has caused small and large alcohol beverage producers—as well as health-conscious consumers of adult beverages. (Source: Google Alcohol News, 03/21/11) biggovernment.com, 03/20/11

Trying to keep up with alcohol policy changes in your state or to compare policy changes across multiple states through 2009? The Alcohol Policy Information System (APIS) is the resource for you.
Sponsored by The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) at the National Institutes of Health and developed by the The CDM Group, Inc., among others, APIS now includes 34 policy changes across 29 policy areas made in 2009. (Source: Join Together, 03/15/11)

Doesn’t having a beer in the afternoon when you’re at work sound pretty cool? Sure it does — but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Drinking at work is apparently getting more popular, especially in Silicon Valley workplaces, Bloomberg reported March 13.
Companies like Crowdflower, Tello, Twitter, and Yelp all reported making alcohol in some form available to their employees on a fairly constant basis – in some cases, 24/7.
Twitter keeps its employee fridge stocked with nonalcoholic drinks, plus beer and wine. „We treat employees as adults,“ said Twitter spokeswoman Jodi Olson, „and they act accordingly.“ (Source: Join Together, 03/18/11) Comment: A new study in Switzerland shows that the additional alcohol-related employee costs at workplaces are one Billion Swiss Francs a year.

Another lawsuit has been filed against Phusion Projects, LLC, maker of Four Loko alcoholic beverages, Crain’s reported March 9.
The new lawsuit, which is aiming for class-action status, was filed March 4 in the Southern District Court of California. It claims that Four Loko misled its customers about the potency of its caffeinated alcoholic beverages by using fruit flavors, colorful packaging, and clever shelf placement in stores to suggest they were similar to non-alcoholic beverages. Source: Join Together, 03/18/11)

Lawmakers have been weighing whether to raise the tax on alcoholic beverages since the first day of this year’s legislative session. But the idea is getting a fresh look in recent weeks — with a twist.
Health advocates recently learned that DC imposes a „special sales tax“ on alcohol, charging an extra 3-4 percent on top of the regular 6 percent sales tax rate. Maryland, they argue, should follow the District’s lead and develop its own special sales tax for alcohol.
The new proposal comes as the General Assembly is getting into the nitty gritty of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s $14 billion general fund budget. Revenue increases are considered separately from the budget, but they generally go hand in hand. (Source: Google Alcohol News, 03/18/11) weblogs.baltimoresun.com, 03/17/11 our Online-Comment: Alcohol taxes should be seen in relation to the damage and harm alcoholic beverages produce in society. Alcohol taxes should be high enough to reduce general consumption. This would reduce also the tribute we pay a life long without being asked for alcohol related social costs. The profit goes to the alcohol industry.

Twelve York County convenience stores are no stranger to selling alcohol to underage drinkers; two Fort Mill and one Tega Cay convenience store also have allowed some underage drinkers to purchase alcohol, records show.
For those illegal sales, each of those stores failed recent compliance checks conducted by York County law enforcement. Topping the list with three violations is a Fort Mill convenience stop.
“Our highest violator is Fairway Fuel,” Corree Carelock, prevention director of Rock Hill’s Keystone Substance Services, said of the convenience store located at 1290 Tom Hall St. (Source: Google Alcohol News, 03/17/11) heraldonline.com, 03/16/11

ATLANTA — The Georgia state senate narrowly passed a bill Wednesday that would allow local cities and counties to vote on Sunday alcohol sales.
After nearly four hours of debate and multiple amendments, senators passed the measure 32-22, three more votes than needed for passage. It was Crossover Day, the last day for the bill to pass in the Senate in order for it to stand a chance at becoming a law. The bill is now headed to the House of Representatives for a vote. (Source: Google Alcohol News, 03/17/11) wsbtv.com, 03/17//11

An intriguing new study by European researchers has found that teen girls aged around 16 years are hitting the bottle more frequently than their male counterparts.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that 80 percent of all 15- to 16-year-olds drink regularly, usually downing at least five units at once, the Daily Mail reports.
Over the last decade, binge drinking habits have greatly increased among adolescent girls, and though they consume less than boys, they get drunk more often than boys do. …
“We also see that this drinking is strongly related to problems such as fights, accidents, and unwanted sexual relations.” (Source: Alcohol Reports, 03/14/11) themedguru.com, 03/10/11 Comment: The reason is the marketing of alcopops and that governments reacted too late.

Findings from the 2004 Global School-Based Student Health Survey.
This study examines the associations between alcohol marketing strategies, alcohol education including knowledge about dangers of alcohol and refusal of alcohol, and drinking prevalence, problem drinking, and drunkenness. …
These findings underscore the importance of restricting alcohol marketing practices as an important policy strategy for reducing alcohol use and its dire consequences among vulnerable youth. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 03/15/11)

Background:  The “prevention paradox,” a notion that most alcohol-related problems are generated by nonheavy drinkers, has significant relevance to public health policy and prevention efforts. The extent of the paradox has driven debate over the type of balance that should be struck between alcohol policies targeting a select group of high-risk drinkers versus more global approaches that target the population at-large. This paper examines the notion that most alcohol problems among 4 Hispanic national groups in the United States are attributable to moderate drinkers.
Conclusions:  The prevention paradox holds when using volume-based risk groupings and disappears when using a binge-drinking risk grouping. Binge drinkers who drink moderately on an average account for more harms than those who drink heavily across all groups, with exception of Cuban Americans. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 03/16/11) onlinelibrary.wiley.com, 03/15/11