Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Grant Hewison: Communities Against Alcohol Harm Secretary on the concerns over high-strength beers

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Grant Hewison: Communities Against Alcohol Harm Secretary on the concerns over high-strength beers · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So alarm bells are being raised about these high strength
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: beers taking roots in the marketplace. Single bottles of beer
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: are being sold with alcohol contents ranging from eight percent
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: up to as high as sixteen percent. They're being sold
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: in supermarkets. Grant Hewison as the secretary at Communities against
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Alcohol Harm and joins in now haligrant.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Good morning, how are you very good?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Why have these beers suddenly become a thing? Why have
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: they become so popular?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, these beer products have very high alcohol by
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: volume content. Back in the day RTDs with that level
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: of alcohol by content, we're described as court cases and
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: a can, and the industry came round to the view
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: that should be voluntarily prohibited, so they reduced the volume
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: to seven percent. But now we've sort of seen the
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: beer market develop into these extra strong and mega strong
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: beer products.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And yet my supermarket is full of wine with twelve
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: percent alcohol content and they don't call that crime in
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a can.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: The wine isn't intended to be drunk in one session.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So these are five hundred milk cans. You pop them open,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: they're fizzy, They're going to go flat pretty quickly, so
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: they're designed to be drunk pretty quickly.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: So that's the risk is do you have some sort
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: of studies that can actually prove that, because I'm pretty
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: sure most people I know who open a bottle of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: wine tend to get through it.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're not the sort of people PEPs. I know. No,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: wine's wine, you know, generally has drunk over the course
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: of an evening. These are designed to be drunk in
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: a very quick manner.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, I did know. I've already told the story. I've
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: had a twelve percent beer in front and it was
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty full on you know. One, you were happy too,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: you were squiffy. Three. Honestly, you were hallucinating. Is there
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: something about high alcohol content in a carbonated beverage like
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: a beer means that the alcohol gets them better?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, it's probably probably just the case that you
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: drink and consume much more quickly. What's also important is
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: that these products are sold as singles, often for quite
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: a cheap price, under six dollars. What's the problem, I see, Well, again,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: you're just consuming it very quickly. It's designed so that
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: you can PEPs. If you're young, you can secrete them
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: on your person pretty easily. You can purchase them as
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a single for a very cheap price. So they have
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: that high risk associated with them as well.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: So are you just warning against these beers or would
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you like them band?
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Well, look, this is what the government did back in
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  Speaker 2: twenty thirteen with RTDs of that alcohol contents. They were
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: looking to prohibit them. The industry realized this was an issue,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: this was a court case in the can and the
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: industry came around pretty quickly to saying there's very high
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: strength products that are carbonated that are in single cans.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: We're not what we should be selling.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Good stuff. Grant, have you had one?
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Have I had one? I've had a taste of one,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: the sixteen percent one. Yes, they're not pleasant, but they
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: will get you intoxicated very quickly.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Go on. Yeah, thank you so much. That's doctor Grant Hewison,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: who is from Communities Against Alcohol Harm. He's the secretary
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  Speaker 1: for more.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: From Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news Talks.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: It'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.