126
Alberta distillery to stop making 4-litre vodka jugs after minister raises concern
(edmonton.ctvnews.ca)
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
126 points (98.5% liked)
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it seems like their issue is the price. "not priced responsibly"
My issue is honestly the marketing. Calling it "the party jug" pretty much tells everyone exactly what it's for, and let's just say it's probably not for your doctor recommended 1-2 drink daily maximum. Now I'm not a teetotaller or anything, but this is obviously directed at quite a young audience, which I think is a bit problematic.
...sharing with a large group of people?
To me it seems aimed at people that want to buy a lot of alcohol for not very much money, which tends to be young people, but they don't seem to have done anything in particular to target young people.
1 liter of vodka is more than enough to kill a healthy adult by alcohol poisoning. It's not the size of the container that prevents that. Are these 4 liter jugs less expensive than 1 liter bottles?
If you want to prevent alcohol deaths you should focus on addressing the causes of alcoholism (I'm not an expert but shooting from the hip: loneliness and hopelessness) and drunk driving (again, not an expert but: transit infrastructure).
Laughs in Finnish
I definitely removed some qualifiers to avoid overly hedging my point, so yes I concede that not every healthy adult would be killed by consuming 1L of vodka in a single sitting.
Although I would also point out that a person that thinks that drinking a liter of vodka is laughably safe, is probably not healthy.
You kind of countered your own comment at the end
One of the leading causes of alcoholism is cheap access to alcohol
I've done some toggling and found this article abstract.
and what I have to say is this:
Touche.
Key sentence:
I guess I'd be pleased to see the provincial Alberta government embrace epidemiologically based policy making. Especially if they do it consistently and not just when it aligns with their ideology.
For alcohol, because of it's prevalence in society, yet known destructiveness, it is a very prickly topic. Historically we already know that prohibition is the worst solution to the problem and has far worse outcomes.
I don't think it's marketed to young people, I think it's marketed to severe alcoholics. There are a shocking number of people who will go through this jug in a day or two.
I agree with the minister's concerns that it's too cheap. I recently moved from BC and it seems that bottom shelf hard liquor in general in Alberta is too cheap.
Why? Seems arbitrary to cry foul about that.
I personally think there should be some hard ethical bounds on marketing when it comes to potentially life wrecking substances. We do this for cigarettes, right?
Now I think humankind's relationship with alcohol is a bit more nuanced, but when alcohol packaging starts to look like sugary cereal boxes, that's where I draw the line. Admittedly this isn't quite there, but it's borderline IMO. I don't think we should be encouraging binge drinking by selling party sized mix packs like this.
Mind you, it's not the size or price that bothers me. My grandma always bought gallon bottles of booze from the US on the cheap, but they'd last her a few years. That's fine. Sell it without fun-dinosaur, and put on a boring-ass, noname vodka label, and it's fine by me.
Just an addendum, I feel similarly about marketing of sugary cereal to children.
Edit: Lol, why'd you ask if you were just going to downvote and not engage with the response?
I don't vote on here, I never do. I didn't do anything to your post. You have your view. I think it's a bit arbitrary. Take it a step further and ban porn. It sounds like arbitrarily picking and choosing what you think is bad for society and needing to control society for them. Like the "video games cause violence" liars.
A very vague and relative metric. Seems very economical to me.
"Responsibly" here mean "more expensively", if you read the article. I'm not sure if this guy's specific issues is public health or protecting the competition. "I don't think a four-litre plastic jug of vodka adds to the quality of the distillery industry that we have in this provinceβ kind of implies the latter.
Eh, that's like 10 bucks more than if you were to buy 4 1 litre smirnoffs.
In Canada? And Smirnoff vodka(40% ABV), not Smirnoff ice(4.5% ABV)?
https://shop.realcanadianliquorstore.ca/collections/smirnoff
I'm looking at vodka, this is also in America. But the price isn't that much higher. I was wrong about it being 15. It's actually 16.99.
A 1140 ml Smirnoff In the same region as this store is $33.98, which makes the $49.95 cost for a 4L quite low.
Jesus christ yeah, ok. I should have narrowed my search by region.
Really puts into perspective how fucking easy it is to get alcohol in the U.S. Kinda scary actually.