Researchers find flaws in alcohol consumption rates

Updated November 02, 2010 08:08:00

Researchers at Perth's Curtin University say alcohol consumption is indeed still on the rise because previous estimates have failed to take proper account of factors like an increase in wine sales.

Associate Professor Tanya Chikritzhs led a study conducted by the National Drug Research Institute at the university and helped find the flaws in the assumptions previously made on alcohol consumption.

"There has been a bit of head scratching in the alcohol research community in Australia because we've been aware that alcohol caused hospitalisations and various harm has been increasing over time in Australia in all states and territories the last few decades," she said.

"We had an inkling that there was probably something up with the per capita consumption estimate as they were for Australia and we knew from research in the US that the alcohol contents of wine in that nation had been increasing over time.

"There is data collected by urine monitors which showed that consumption in Australia was increasing.

"So it was of great interest to us when early this year the Australian Bureau of Statistics produced its latest estimates of consumption showing that it had worked out new assumptions about alcohol content in wine, that they showed a marked increase.

"Put that together with an increase in wine consumption generally, so an increase in market share for wine across Australia, the two make up for a significant increase in alcohol consumption in Australia and increasing trends in consumption overall."

Professor Chikritzhs says wine was rated on average as having an 11.4 per cent alcohol level when the real figure was closer to 12.7 per cent.

"It's quite a difference and it makes up, over time, a difference in trends," she said.

"So our past alcohol policies, our past approach to alcohol related issues in this country have been based on the assumption that things aren't getting any worse in terms of consumption when the reality is in actual fact they have been increasing steadily for over a decade."

Cheap alcohol

Professor Chikritzhs says the work should give fresh impetus to efforts to tackle excess alcohol consumption in Australia.

"It even adds a little bit more backing to the Government's move to implement the alcopops tax because when it comes down to it, these sort of impartial sales data are extremely important," she said.

"We also collect information about what people think they're drinking or they self-report but it's typically unreliable."

She says the warehouse-style liquor barns and the involvement of supermarkets in selling alcohol has had an effect.

"I guess they're an increasingly obvious picture of the liquor landscape in Australia as we're seeing more, very large, megastores discounting alcohol with very enormous capacity to sell cheap alcohol and we know that price really does matter in terms of how much people consume," she said.

"The other contributing component in Australia is cask wine for instance used to dominate the wine market in Australia. It doesn't so much anymore.

"It's only about 40 per cent or thereabouts, but it used to be about 70 per cent.

"But now we have other products like clean skins which can be extremely cheap - I mean as cheap as orange juice.

"We've got a lot of cheap alcohol out there which has as high an alcohol content as beer, several times higher alcohol content to beer, and which is gaining an increasing proportion of the market and for which the alcohol content has actually increased over time.

"So you put all these together and what we see now is an increasing level of alcohol consumption."

The dangers of alcohol have also been highlighted in a report just published in the British medical journal, The Lancet. Its authors say alcohol is more dangerous than crack cocaine and heroin.

The director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Dr Alex Wodak, agrees with the controversial findings.

"I think it's partly because alcohol seems so innocuous, it seems so safe that people unfortunately draw that conclusion that it really is safe and a lot of people have far too much alcohol, either because they drink a huge quantity in a short period of time or they consistently drink far too much over a long period of time," he said.

Dr Wodak says he would like Australian authorities to raise taxes on alcohol. That, he says, would make alcohol much harder to come by.

Topics: alcohol, drug-use, australia

First posted November 01, 2010 22:01:00