Ever wake up on a Sunday morning with a hangover, wishing that alcohol were more expensive? Like it’s just another instance of the Man trying to keep you down, head-in-toilet, by making beer so irresistibly cheap? If your answer is yes, then you may have already come to the very same far-fetched conclusion that a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health has recently proven: cheap beer means college students binge drink.
Principal investigator Henry Wechsler started from his belief that students themselves are not singly accountable for the college-student binge drinking problem. The study looks at how the prevalence of alcohol marketing campaigns in college campus areas affect students’ level of drinking. Over the course of eight years, trained observers were sent to over 120 college campuses to check out the drinking scene at all major alcohol outlets—bars, clubs and liquor stores.
They found that the heavily promoted items such as kegs, “party balls” and liquor-in-a-fishbowl, combined low price with high volume and were most likely to place college students at risk. The alcohol industry advertises such promos with characteristic subtlety; Wechsler recalls one bar’s advertisement reading “Freshmen Welcome. Bring Fake ID’s.”
Legions of college students may not exactly be shocked by the findings, but in case you need convincing, here’s FM’s pick for the best deals on beer to test out Wechsler’s findings:
Red Line: Bud Light, $3.50
Shay’s: All drafts, $4
Whitney’s: Oktoberfest, $4.50
Noir: Corona, $3.15
Grendel’s: Rolling Rock, $3.40
Charlie’s Kitchen: Budweiser, $2.50
Daedalus: Miller Lite, $3.50
