Brits' Drinking Solution: Double Booze Prices

Authorities hope to prevent deaths by boosting prices

(NEWSER) - British authorities plan to as much as double the price of cheap alcohol to battle the nation's skyrocketing problem of binge drinking. The innovative scheme is intended to help prevent thousands of deaths and hospital admissions every year, according to government officials. A levy may be imposed on the alcohol industry to prevent companies from making windfall profits off of the new prices. Money raised would be earmarked for public health campaigns warning of alcohol dangers. More»

Nation's heaviest boozers are in Wisconsin, study finds

(NEWSER) - Federal health officials have released their most detailed study yet of America's binge drinkers—and if you're a college-educated, high-earning young white man from Wisconsin, you may already be drunk by the time you read this. Researchers found that 38 million Americans, roughly a sixth of the adult population, are binge drinkers who over-indulge an average of 4.4 times a month, Bloomberg reports. A binge was defined as five or more drinks in the space of two hours for men, and four or more drinks for women. More»

They're paid $60 for night at the 'bar'

(NEWSER) - An Arizona State professor wants his students to get smashed—and he’s willing to pay them to do it. That’s because William Corbin is researching the effects of alcohol on behavior, and ASU students are his subjects. Several nights a week, he converts his lab into a bar, complete with top 40 music and jeans-clad research assistants as bartenders, the Arizona Republic reports. Only one kind of drink is served, vodka mixed with 7UP and juice, whose strength is adjusted according to the subject’s weight and sex. More»

Sticking to advised limits would prevent thousands of cases

(NEWSER) - Drinking leads to at least 13,000 cases of cancer in Britain each year, a study finds—and thousands could be avoided if people would stick to alcohol guidelines. That UK-centric finding comes from a study that examined the tie between diet and cancer in eight European countries. Researchers discovered that among men, more than half of the cases of cancer of the upper digestive tract, colorectum, and liver attributed to alcohol in 2008 resulted from having more than two drinks daily; in women, more than 80% resulted from having more than one drink per day, the Guardian reports. More»

(NEWSER) - Stefanie Wilder-Taylor made a name for herself penning light-hearted accounts of life as a hard-drinking mom, so her blog readers were shocked when she announced that she was laying off the sauce, the New York Times reports. Drinking-while-parenting “was a way to express that we’re still fun people,” but when she woke up on the couch fully clothed one morning, she realized, “I have these kids who are depending on me, and I have a bad problem.” More»