More booze equals more brawls

Britain News.Net
Wednesday 14th May, 2008 (ANI)

London, May 14 : If the sales go up at the liquor store near your home, be sure that the amount of assaults on people will go up too.

The finding comes from a new research by a team of Canadian epidemiologists who calculated that an extra 1000 litres of alcohol sales increases the chances of suffering an assault by 13pct.

The study was led by Joel Ray at the University of Toronto, who along with his team tracked sales in nearly 600 state-run liquor stores in Ontario.

Taking into account more than 3000 assaults over 3 years, the researchers recorded alcohol sales at the store nearest the victim's home on the day before the attack.

And their finding - more booze equalled more brawls.

According to them, 1000 extra litres of alcohol sold increased the chances of being assaulted 18pc for men, 21pc for youths aged 13 to 21, and 19pc for city-dwellers.

If an extra 1000 litres of vodka, tequila and other spirits was sold, the chances then jumped by 25pct.

Russell Bennetts, an economist at the Institute of Alcohol Studies in London, UK, said that the results was not taking into account the beer sales.

"Thirteen per cent [the increase averaged between rural and urban areas] was without capturing beers sales, and you would expect beer sales to contribute somewhat to an increase in violence," the New Scientist quoted him, as saying.

The study appears in the journal PLoS Medicine.

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