‘€10 gets you enough drink to overdose’

BOOZE is now so cheap that people can drink to a ‘weekly low-risk threshold’ for less than €10, new research has revealed.

The ‘low-risk’ threshold of 17 drinks over a week costs just €8.49 for men – while for women the cost is just €5.49, Alcohol Action research shows. It was also revealed that we are drinking more than 11 litres of pure alcohol per person a year – which is almost double the global average of 6.2 litres.

Alcohol Action director Dr Bobby Smyth warned yesterday: ‘At this level of affordability, for a tenner you can buy enough drink to cause a fatal alcohol overdose.’

The annual price survey working out the cost of a ‘standard drink’ shows an Irish consumer can spend as little as 50c for cider, 51c for beer, 56c for wine, 60c for gin, 61c for vodka, and 74c for whiskey.

Alcohol Action spokesman Eunan McKinney said: ‘We know the sales and consumption of alcohol, particularly aided by a very strong summer, have increased again. Once the economy started to recover again so did our thirst for alcohol. It’s been going up incrementally year-on-year since 2013.

‘We’re drinking an extra half-a-litre per annum at this stage to just over 11 litres per capita of pure alcohol. It’s quite a lot especially when you compare to the OECD average, the benchmark figure that’s been used for the Public Alcohol Bill, is just over nine litres, and the global average is 6.2 litres.’

The research says the price survey ‘demonstrates the remarkable affordability of alcohol to everyday shoppers and the urgent necessity to implement the Public Health Alcohol Bill including minimum unit pricing that will ensure the low cost of the strongest, cheapest alcohol will be tackled’.

Central Statistics Office figures show the average amount spent on drink in a week is more than €20 per person – €10.56 at home and €10.06 in pubs.