In the Doghouse: Walmart's Plan: Dominate Beer Sales, Steamroll Public Health

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October 29, 2013

Walmart is already the nation's biggest beer retailer, but corporate greed knows no bounds. The company recently announced its strategy to double beer sales by selling it as a loss-leader and accosting shoppers with in-your-face, floor-to-ceiling stacks of cases. Walmart joins mega-retailers such as Costco and Amazon, bent on using cheap alcohol to lure customers and keep the profits flowing. Drowning the masses in super-cheap alcohol comes at a huge economic, health and social cost, and the mega-retailers or alcohol producers are not paying even close to their fair share of the tab for alcohol-related injuries, diseases, and deaths.

Cheap alcohol prices encourage excessive drinking and youth consumption, and undermine pricing recommendations to prevent those very same public health problems. High alcohol prices reduce violent crime, traffic crashes, disease, and mortality. Youth are particularly sensitive to beer pricing, and Walmart's planned mountains of cheap Bud Light, the underage youth brand of choice, fly in the face of the U.S. Surgeon General's recommendation to eliminate low-price, high-volume alcohol availability to prevent underage drinking.

The economic havoc of excessive alcohol consumption is staggering. Alcohol-related harm from excessive consumption directly costs U.S. federal, state and local governments $94 billion annually, running about $0.80 per drink. Alcohol excise taxes cover about $0.15 of this cost, while taxpayers bear the remaining $0.65. Walmart, other retailers, and the rest of the industry rake in the profits, while taxpayers subsidize the costs.

Walmart's pricing strategy is an unacceptable assault on public health and safety. Raising the price of alcohol by increasing taxes is the most effective policy to mitigate the public cost of cheap alcohol. Unless policymakers increase the price of alcohol, taxpayers and their families will pay the tab while Walmart and alcohol producers reap ever-increasing profits, and the alcohol-related harm continues. 

Diageo's fake Irish "Alcoholiday" to sell Guinness

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October 10, 2013

In 2009, Diageo, the British multinational which owns Guinness, created “Arthur’s Day," named for the brewery's founder, Arthur Guinness, to mark the 250th anniversary of the the eponymous brand. The event is supposedly a national cultural celebration of Irish music and heritage, but in reality a cynical marketing tactic to boost beer sales. Of course, the irony of a British conglomerate buying up an Irish brand and then using Irish pride to sell them the beer was not lost on us. Apparently it wasn’t lost on many Irish musicians and journalists, who began voicing their disgust at Diageo’s PR scam preceding this year’s event and calling for a boycott.

More concerning is the reported 30% increase in ambulance calls in Dublin and 2,000 hospital admissions nationwide for alcohol-related illness after the 2012 Arthur’s Day, directly resulting from mass binge drinking. Diageo encourages nationwide drinking by raising a Guinness in Arthur’s name just before 6 p.m. As concern about alarming rates of binge drinking and alcohol-related harm in Ireland escalate, Diageo capitalizes on the country's vulnerabilities to sell more beer.

Diageo’s response to the criticism is even more outrageous. They claim they are addressing complaints about the damage and chaos by stepping up promotion of “responsible” drinking on Arthur’s Day, a clever way to promote drinking while absolving themselves of responsibility for the harm caused by a national day of binge drinking that they created.