Wednesday 12 September 2012

Plain Packaging For Alcohol: A Work In Progress

You may recall an article early this month detailing how 'scientists' have identified a link between glass shape and the speed at which individuals drink alcohol. In customary fashion, The Sun embellished this a little for impact.
Using a curved glass could get you drunk quicker, scientists say
This is, of course, not strictly true. The speed at which one drinks is no guide to how quickly one gets drunk, nor does it suggest that drinking faster means drinking more.

However, it is clear that the study concerned is part of a concerted effort by prohibitionists to ban alcohol advertising and marketing in the future (I wonder where they got that idea from, eh?).

You may have noticed in recent years that beers, especially, are now served in distinctive branded glasses. Most people seem to appreciate this both on an aesthetic level and also for the fact that it helps identify whose pint is whose when with friends. As usual, though, what pleases the public instantly makes public health miseries - who seemingly attach no human benefit to happiness or satisfaction - see red, as the study's introduction hints at.
In particular, there has been an increase in branded drinking glasses in the United Kingdom in recent years, many of which include shape as a differentiating feature. These glasses include chalice glasses, curved beer flutes, tankard and novel curved beer glasses, and have been used by numerous alcohol brands including Stella Artois, Heineken, Guinness, Pilsner, Amstel, Smirnoff, Carlsberg, Carling and Jameson's whiskey. While alcohol advertising is still permitted in the United Kingdom, packaging and, by extension, drinking glasses provide another, currently unregulated, marketing channel.
Before achieving their stated goal of banning all advertising of alcohol, it seems the prohibitionist wing already have their sights set on branding too.

Now, let's just remind you of what a certain Deborah Arnott said about the prospect of alcohol advertising being banned just a few short months ago.
"[...] The “domino theory” i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false. The same argument was used against the ban on tobacco advertising, but 9 years after the tobacco ban in the UK, alcohol advertising is still permitted with no sign of it being prohibited."
As utter failures go, Debs' idiocy in spouting that is right up there in Michael Fish territory and becoming more embarrassing for the silly mare every passing day.

You see, notes to the glass shape study make it quite clear that they are, most definitely, using plain packaging proposals as a precedent for their own designs on banning branded glasses.
There may be other potentially modifiable factors which may influence alcohol consumption and drinking rate. These might include marketing signals (i.e., branding), and vehicles for these signals such as the glasses from which beverages are consumed. Legislation to control or limit these signals may therefore influence drinking behaviour. A parallel can be drawn with the tobacco control literature, where plain packaging has been shown to increase visual attention towards health warnings compared with branded packaging in non-smokers and light smokers.
Not only that, but one of the authors of the study - funded to the tune of £3,671 [page 48] by Alcohol Research UK, a former government 'arms length body' still using legacy taxpayer monies - is Marcus Munafò, a member of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies.

All very incestuous and also an indication that - whatever denial of precedents and 'domino theories' these truth-challenged nags profess in public - they are furiously working behind the scenes to link every strand of prohibitionist thinking together into a network of inter-connecting tactical abuses of the public's enjoyment and freedom of choice.

The last word must surely go to the first commenter at the Sun article, who saw that the 'scientists' (which the authors of the study most likely are not) mentioned in the headline were busying themselves with stuff the public would rather they didn't, and asked the obvious question.
Found a cure for cancer yet lads?
Quite.

H/T Harridanic.


12 comments:

SteveW said...

I'm just amazed that we never saw this coming...
Only consolation is that there might be a little more resistance from the drinkers than there has been from smokers. One can but hope.

Ivan_Denisovich said...

Marcus Munafo is unlikely to ever discover a cure for anything. He has an MA in Psychology and Philosophy from Oxford. He did go on to get an MSc and even a PhD from Southampton but I doubt that he spends much time in anthing we might recognise as a laboratory.

Like many people with degrees in humanities and soft sciences, Marcus has done OK out of the recent obsession with public health. Having completed his PhD in something quite interesting but poorly funded he discovered the joy of tobacco control. In his own words:




"In my own career, I remained at Oxford for five years,
working on various projects around smoking and smoking cessation, publishing my
work in academic journals, and raising my profile as a scientist. This included
numerous trips to international conferences to present this work, always taking
time to enjoy the luxury of visiting these places."



Nice work if you can get it and we can hardly blame him for moving on to the next gravy train. He does express interest in all sorts of interesting genetic and neuroscience projects but most of his current grants seem to cover not very scientific tobacco control "research"



Still, if people pay for that kind of tosh, can we really blame him?

timbone said...

I have decided to become a scientist. You don't need any qualifications. I think all you like minded people should do the same. Start any comment answering a newspaper article or anti fun blog, "as a scientist, I ................."
Some years ago, I remember a self educated religious leader deciding to wear a dog collar, and overnight he was tranformed from an oddball to an authority. Easy.

Fred Barboo said...

The author couldn't possibly be the woman pictured on this profile, could it? http://www.bris.ac.uk/expsych/people/angela-s-attwood/index.html

Dick_Puddlecote said...

How bizarre! :-0

Jeff Wood said...

Tim, that is really good.

nisakiman said...

These joyless bastards really won't be satisfied until we are living in a parallel of Mao's socialist utopia, all wearing the same drab uniform, and all consuming unbranded products generated, and rationed, by the government according to their diktats. Aesthetics are not part of the equation.

Those Peroni glasses are really nice! I want some! One of my favourite beers, too. Light and dry - perfect quaffing material for a hot summer's day.

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX In particular, there has been an increase in branded drinking glasses in
the United Kingdom in recent years, many of which include shape as a
differentiating feature. These glasses include chalice glasses,....etc, etc XX

WTF! And the bars ataff, on a busy Saturday night, have to serve each particular beer in its "own" glass?!?!

Tell them to fuck RIGHT off!

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Agreed. (I have a couple of those glasses here ... shhh) ;)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Staff I've spoken to quite like the branded glasses. One told me it helped him pull the right pint when drinks orders are buzzing around his head.

truckerlyn said...

"The speed at which one drinks is no guide to how quickly one gets drunk, nor does it suggest that drinking faster means drinking more."
So true. I believe it can have a lot to do with the mood one is in. I rarely drink, however at times, if out with a friend I have consumed a whole bottle of wine, with a meal, and still been quite sober, however, on other occasions I can have a meal with one large glass of wine and be quite tipsy!
"As usual, though, what pleases the public instantly makes public health miseries - who seemingly attach no human benefit to happiness or satisfaction "
Absolutely. However, isn't longevity linked to happiness and contentment? I believe I saw/read something about this a while ago. Therefore, as so many people are giving up smoking (ha ha), they have to find some way of not letting too many of us live too long because the government cannot afford to pay our pensions! You never know, the morons in government might wake up to this one day and realise that really ASH, and co, are stitching them right up!

Adam Haseman said...

"Micheal Fish territory" That little quote from you made me laugh. You shuld use it every time the antis mention the dimino theroy.