Monday 18 October 2010

Chocolate liqueurs

I mentioned this on Twitter earlier today, but felt it needed more coverage.

The Sun has an article in which is says that young people can get drunk for half he price of a chocolate bar.

According to the Press Association, the report comes from a group known as "Core Cities". Unfortunately, the report itself doesn't appear to be on their website.*

Leaving this aside, the Sun's article - and, to be fair, those in other newspapers - is misleading for one simple reason: it completely ignores the fact that there is an age limit on buying alcohol.

When it comes to children, you can't just compare chocolate and alcohol on a simple unit price as it does - one is freely available for children to buy, one isn't.

If the Sun is going to complain about underage drinking, it needs to have a go at how they get access to booze.

* If anyone does have a copy of the report, I'd be grateful if you could leave a comment.

1 comment:

Sim-O said...

The Sun, or the report reported by the Sun, compare the price of a pint of the booze when it isn't sold in pints

"Unbranded lager was being sold for just 92p for a 1.76-litre bottle - around 3½ pints or 26p a pint, according to the Core Cities Health Improvement Collaborative research"

So if the cheapest you can buy this 26p-a-pint-lager is 92p, it's not cheaper than a chocolate bar.

They're misleading by not comparing one unit of sale with another unit of sale.
If they're gonna do that they need to breakdown the price of a Yorkie bar (the one mentioned in the Suns' article) to the price of it's individual chunks as well.