So are they going to be stopping buyers from buying more than 4L in multiple containers? Seems like that will generate more waste, this isn’t an eco-friendly policy.
My issue is honestly the marketing. Calling it “the party jug” pretty much tells everyone exactly what it’s for, and let’s just say it’s probably not for your doctor recommended 1-2 drink daily maximum. Now I’m not a teetotaller or anything, but this is obviously directed at quite a young audience, which I think is a bit problematic.
I don’t think it’s marketed to young people, I think it’s marketed to severe alcoholics. There are a shocking number of people who will go through this jug in a day or two.
I agree with the minister’s concerns that it’s too cheap. I recently moved from BC and it seems that bottom shelf hard liquor in general in Alberta is too cheap.
I’m not saying just sin tax the shit, it’s too cheap in proportion to other alcohol. The low-income problem drinker who switches from beer to jugs of vodka to save money is going to make their problem much much worse.
Go home. They like shit excuses for logic better on the other side the mountains. Nobody’s switching from beer to vodka by the gallon, they’re already there. 2x2 liters instead of a gallon jug, big fucking difference. Saskatchewan you can buy vodka by the 5 gallon blue water jug.
I personally think there should be some hard ethical bounds on marketing when it comes to potentially life wrecking substances. We do this for cigarettes, right?
Now I think humankind’s relationship with alcohol is a bit more nuanced, but when alcohol packaging starts to look like sugary cereal boxes, that’s where I draw the line. Admittedly this isn’t quite there, but it’s borderline IMO. I don’t think we should be encouraging binge drinking by selling party sized mix packs like this.
Mind you, it’s not the size or price that bothers me. My grandma always bought gallon bottles of booze from the US on the cheap, but they’d last her a few years. That’s fine. Sell it without fun-dinosaur, and put on a boring-ass, noname vodka label, and it’s fine by me.
Just an addendum, I feel similarly about marketing of sugary cereal to children.
Edit: Lol, why’d you ask if you were just going to downvote and not engage with the response?
I don’t vote on here, I never do. I didn’t do anything to your post. You have your view. I think it’s a bit arbitrary. Take it a step further and ban porn. It sounds like arbitrarily picking and choosing what you think is bad for society and needing to control society for them. Like the “video games cause violence” liars.
Calling it “the party jug” pretty much tells everyone exactly what it’s for…
…sharing with a large group of people?
this is obviously directed at quite a young audience
To me it seems aimed at people that want to buy a lot of alcohol for not very much money, which tends to be young people, but they don’t seem to have done anything in particular to target young people.
1 liter of vodka is more than enough to kill a healthy adult by alcohol poisoning. It’s not the size of the container that prevents that. Are these 4 liter jugs less expensive than 1 liter bottles?
If you want to prevent alcohol deaths you should focus on addressing the causes of alcoholism (I’m not an expert but shooting from the hip: loneliness and hopelessness) and drunk driving (again, not an expert but: transit infrastructure).
I definitely removed some qualifiers to avoid overly hedging my point, so yes I concede that not every healthy adult would be killed by consuming 1L of vodka in a single sitting.
Although I would also point out that a person that thinks that drinking a liter of vodka is laughably safe, is probably not healthy.
The results also suggested that compared with general price increases, minimum- pricing policies might affect harmful drinkers proportionally more…
I guess I’d be pleased to see the provincial Alberta government embrace epidemiologically based policy making. Especially if they do it consistently and not just when it aligns with their ideology.
For alcohol, because of it’s prevalence in society, yet known destructiveness, it is a very prickly topic. Historically we already know that prohibition is the worst solution to the problem and has far worse outcomes.
“Responsibly” here mean “more expensively”, if you read the article. I’m not sure if this guy’s specific issues is public health or protecting the competition. "I don’t think a four-litre plastic jug of vodka adds to the quality of the distillery industry that we have in this province” kind of implies the latter.
I wonder what the issue is. Seems to me that using something as ubiquitous as the 1 gallon milk jug makes sense. Are they really concerned that someone that’s tempted to drink the entire gallon will be stopped by having to purchase more than one container? The article has a strong focus on the pricing of the vodka… so, who on the Canadian Liquor Board is getting paid to keep prices up? “Spirit of the Albertans” – seems disingenuous to say that the locals are in support of price fixing, as the article seems to imply.
The end of the article hints at spirits-makers being able to bulk purchase alcohol to be blended, and how newer distileries/spirits-makers aren’t required to make the same investment into producing their own base alcohol as was previously required. The way it reads, makes it seem like the article is being sponsored by the big makers in terms of how “small makers” have the unfair advantage and that it’s the small guys lowering prices that is the bad thing.
<shrug> My interpretation could be off, but my tl;dr is corporate has a problem with prices effecting profits, so hit-piece on the independents it is.
Pictures of the jug and price circulated as a funny/embarrassing " 'berta, fuck yeah!" meme. Absolutely nobody cared in the slightest bit.
So of course Marlaina and co. jumped on it to make headlines and noise about being the authority on good corporate behaviour, and looking out for the best interests of Albertans, etc…
It’s UCP noise-making and flag-waving, nothing more.
Ah, sounds like that Marlaina person would snub their nose at me. My second thought after “Huh, gallon of vodka makes perfect sense” was “bet college me could have double-fisted them and lived to tell the tale”.
Your interpretation is in line with conversations I’ve had with store clerks. The big distilleries, Smirnoff etc, don’t like the free market competition and apparently this isn’t the first time they’ve gotten the province involved.
As I admittedly don’t actually know much of Canadian politics, especially so at the provincial level, I had to make some broad assumptions but it seems that such practices are just a given at this point, regardless of geographical location. I found out recently that despite living in the land of the so-called free, it is apparently very much frowned upon to just like… open a roadside tavern for weary travelers. Something about health codes and livestock in common areas or something <shrug>.
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