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Speaker 1: So alarm bells are being raised about these high strength

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Speaker 1: beers taking roots in the marketplace. Single bottles of beer

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Speaker 1: are being sold with alcohol contents ranging from eight percent

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Speaker 1: up to as high as sixteen percent. They're being sold

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Speaker 1: in supermarkets. Grant Hewison as the secretary at Communities against

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Speaker 1: Alcohol Harm and joins in now haligrant.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, how are you very good?

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Speaker 1: Why have these beers suddenly become a thing? Why have

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Speaker 1: they become so popular?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, look, these beer products have very high alcohol by

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Speaker 2: volume content. Back in the day RTDs with that level

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Speaker 2: of alcohol by content, we're described as court cases and

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Speaker 2: a can, and the industry came round to the view

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Speaker 2: that should be voluntarily prohibited, so they reduced the volume

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Speaker 2: to seven percent. But now we've sort of seen the

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Speaker 2: beer market develop into these extra strong and mega strong

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Speaker 2: beer products.

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Speaker 1: And yet my supermarket is full of wine with twelve

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Speaker 1: percent alcohol content and they don't call that crime in

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Speaker 1: a can.

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Speaker 2: The wine isn't intended to be drunk in one session.

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Speaker 2: So these are five hundred milk cans. You pop them open,

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Speaker 2: they're fizzy, They're going to go flat pretty quickly, so

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Speaker 2: they're designed to be drunk pretty quickly.

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Speaker 1: So that's the risk is do you have some sort

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Speaker 1: of studies that can actually prove that, because I'm pretty

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Speaker 1: sure most people I know who open a bottle of

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Speaker 1: wine tend to get through it.

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Speaker 2: Oh, they're not the sort of people PEPs. I know. No,

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Speaker 2: wine's wine, you know, generally has drunk over the course

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Speaker 2: of an evening. These are designed to be drunk in

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Speaker 2: a very quick manner.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I did know. I've already told the story. I've

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Speaker 1: had a twelve percent beer in front and it was

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Speaker 1: pretty pretty full on you know. One, you were happy too,

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Speaker 1: you were squiffy. Three. Honestly, you were hallucinating. Is there

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Speaker 1: something about high alcohol content in a carbonated beverage like

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Speaker 1: a beer means that the alcohol gets them better?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, it's probably probably just the case that you

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Speaker 2: drink and consume much more quickly. What's also important is

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Speaker 2: that these products are sold as singles, often for quite

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Speaker 2: a cheap price, under six dollars. What's the problem, I see, Well, again,

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Speaker 2: you're just consuming it very quickly. It's designed so that

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Speaker 2: you can PEPs. If you're young, you can secrete them

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Speaker 2: on your person pretty easily. You can purchase them as

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Speaker 2: a single for a very cheap price. So they have

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Speaker 2: that high risk associated with them as well.

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Speaker 1: So are you just warning against these beers or would

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Speaker 1: you like them band?

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Speaker 2: Well, look, this is what the government did back in

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Speaker 2: twenty thirteen with RTDs of that alcohol contents. They were

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Speaker 2: looking to prohibit them. The industry realized this was an issue,

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Speaker 2: this was a court case in the can and the

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Speaker 2: industry came around pretty quickly to saying there's very high

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Speaker 2: strength products that are carbonated that are in single cans.

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Speaker 2: We're not what we should be selling.

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Speaker 1: Good stuff. Grant, have you had one?

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Speaker 2: Have I had one? I've had a taste of one,

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Speaker 2: the sixteen percent one. Yes, they're not pleasant, but they

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Speaker 2: will get you intoxicated very quickly.

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Speaker 1: Go on. Yeah, thank you so much. That's doctor Grant Hewison,

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Speaker 1: who is from Communities Against Alcohol Harm. He's the secretary

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Speaker 1: for more.

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Speaker 2: From Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news Talks.

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Speaker 1: It'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast

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