Health & Medicine
Budweiser to Blame for Most Alcohol-Related ER Visits
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Aug 16, 2013 12:43 PM EDT
We all love to throw back a nice tall glass of beer after a hard day's work, but too much alcohol consumption can be down-right fun...I mean dangerous. And when it comes to indulging in too many deviant beverages, a new study shows that the alcohol of choice most commonly linked to emergency room visits happens to be none other than our old friend mr. Budweiser.
Up until now, scientists have continually questioned what drink sent so many frat boys barfing up in hospital rooms. Yet the results of a pilot study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health show that after surveying E.R. patients who'd been hedonistically drinking, this alcoholic beverage appeared at the front of the line as the most likely to send you to the hospital, even before the popular Steel Reserve Malt Liquor, Colt 45 malt liquor, Bud Ice (another malt liquor), Bud Light, and a discount-priced vodka called Barton's.
NBC News notes that Budweiser has 9.1 percent of the national beer market, and represents approximately 15 percent of the E.R. "market."
"Some products are marketed to certain groups of people in our society," said Traci Toomey, the director of the University of Minnesota's alcohol epidemiology program, who was not involved in the study. Higher-alcohol malt liquor, for example, is heavily advertised in African-American neighborhoods, via the news organization. "So we might want to put some controls on certain products if we find they are tied to greater risk. But how they are marketed and priced is critical information and that has been very hard to study."
"The Federal Trade Commission, in reports, and in personal communication with me, said this kind of research cannot be done," said David Jernigan, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins and the director of the study, via the news organization. "The National Institute on Drug Abuse gave me similar pushback."
However, the study authors note that the small sample size of participants involved (105 people) situated in a predominately black neighborhood in Baltimore may have caused skewed results.
What do you think?
See Now:
NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
©2024 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.
More on SCIENCEwr
First Posted: Aug 16, 2013 12:43 PM EDT
We all love to throw back a nice tall glass of beer after a hard day's work, but too much alcohol consumption can be down-right fun...I mean dangerous. And when it comes to indulging in too many deviant beverages, a new study shows that the alcohol of choice most commonly linked to emergency room visits happens to be none other than our old friend mr. Budweiser.
Up until now, scientists have continually questioned what drink sent so many frat boys barfing up in hospital rooms. Yet the results of a pilot study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health show that after surveying E.R. patients who'd been hedonistically drinking, this alcoholic beverage appeared at the front of the line as the most likely to send you to the hospital, even before the popular Steel Reserve Malt Liquor, Colt 45 malt liquor, Bud Ice (another malt liquor), Bud Light, and a discount-priced vodka called Barton's.
NBC News notes that Budweiser has 9.1 percent of the national beer market, and represents approximately 15 percent of the E.R. "market."
"Some products are marketed to certain groups of people in our society," said Traci Toomey, the director of the University of Minnesota's alcohol epidemiology program, who was not involved in the study. Higher-alcohol malt liquor, for example, is heavily advertised in African-American neighborhoods, via the news organization. "So we might want to put some controls on certain products if we find they are tied to greater risk. But how they are marketed and priced is critical information and that has been very hard to study."
"The Federal Trade Commission, in reports, and in personal communication with me, said this kind of research cannot be done," said David Jernigan, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins and the director of the study, via the news organization. "The National Institute on Drug Abuse gave me similar pushback."
However, the study authors note that the small sample size of participants involved (105 people) situated in a predominately black neighborhood in Baltimore may have caused skewed results.
What do you think?
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone