Young drinkers choosing hard liquor over beer

An Iowa City bar owner says there is a simple explanation for more binge drinking: hard liquor.

“We have binge drinking like it's never been in this country before,” said Leah Cohen, owner of Bo James in Iowa City.

“It's a real danger,” she said.

Cohen says during the last decade or so she's noticed see more young drinkers turning to hard liquor instead of beer.

“I know for instance a bar owner in town that told me their liquor sales to beer are 85 percent alcohol and 15 percent beer,” she said.

One reason for the shift is the attractive, instant effect of liquor.

“Hard alcohol tends to give a good buzz quickly,” explained Cohen.

But Cohen believes a bigger reason for this increasingly popular trend is money.

“To get a keg of beer now is probably about one hundred dollars, you have deposits, those sorts of things,” she said. “You can still buy a bottle of Vodka for 8 dollars in the store.”

The Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division says, based on May prices, a bar pays about 60 cents for one 12-ounce draw of beer. A shot of vodka costs a bar just 21 cents.

Cohen says that is why many downtown Iowa City bars offer drink specials on hard alcohol.

“Would you rather sell a $2 rum and Coke or a two dollar pint of beer?,” posed Cohen. “You make far more on the rum and Coke.”

However, Cohen says those budget-friendly drink specials can confuse young drinkers.

“They can go to one of those specials and get one pitcher of rum and Coke and be black out drunk and have no idea of how much they drank,” she said.

That is why Cohen hopes the city council will regulate how much alcohol is in drinks so people know how much alcohol they're drinking.

“I definitely think that should be something that is looked at and standardized across the board because then students who are choosing to drink know what they're getting in that particular drink,” said Tayna Villhauer, Health Iowa Coordinator at the University of Iowa.

Cohen says teaching young people about the harmful effects of hard liquor could save them from dying from alcohol poisoning.

Cohen says she plans to bring up the idea of regulating drink sizes with city council members sometime this year.

Given the new minimum bar entry age the city recently imposed, she says the timing might be ripe to introduce this new change.