Gus and Ron -- The original posting is from someone writing a book specifically about wine, which I suspect wants to tout that wine is less likely to lead to drinking-driving (tell me if I'm wrong, Martin). I agree with both of you entirely that who drinks the beverage, under what circumstances, is much more likely to affect the relation with drinking-driving than anything in the beverage itself. (In my view, although there is slightly more evidence to argue over here, the same is true concerning heart-protective and heart-hurting effects of alcohol. The best evidence at this point is that it is the alcohol rather than anything else in wine which provides any such effects.) But producers and friends-of-the-beverage are always wanting to make this argument that theirs is the beverage of moderation. In particular, it was the curiosity of Loran Archer, when he was director of the alcoholism agency in California and was getting this argument from the brewers, that got me to look at this issue first. (Robin Room, Beverage type and drinking problems in a national sample of men, Drinking and Drug Practices Surveyor 12:29-30, 1976.) My conclusion was that it depended on how you looked at the data: "the data do not seem to identify any one beverage as being the 'beverage of moderation', in the sense that users or heavier users of it are less likely than users or heavier users of other beverages to have social or health problems related to drinking". The data I was using was a US national sample of 978 males 21-59, interviewed in 1969 -- whether or not they had a high tangible consequences score, i.e., drinking-related problems in the last 3 years with spouse, friends, police, job, fiannces or health. Among those who used each beverage type at least monthly, the % with high tangible consequences was nearly the same -- 23% for beer and for liquor, 20% for wine. Among those using the beverage type in a "high maximum" pattern (i.e., including drinking 5+ drinks at a sitting at least once in a while), 36% of beer drinkers, 37% of wine drinkers, and 31% of spirits drinkers reported high tangible consequences. But more of those with high tangible consequences were "high maximum" beer (76%) and spirits (60%) drinkers than were "high maximum" wine drinkers (20%). Then again, these turned out to be almost exactly the proportions between the beverages in terms of how many drank that beverage in a "high maximum" pattern. That is, in this sample, whether you ever drank 5+ drinks of a particular beverage was strongly predictive of whether you experienced drinking-related problems. Fewer males under 60 drank wine in this pattern (10%) than drank beer (41%) or liquor (37%) in this pattern. But those who did drink wine in this pattern were just as likely as the others to experience drinking-related problems. Robin ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gus L. Seligmann" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: den 13 januari 2001 13:38 Subject: Re: DUI and wine Based on my observations of my misspent youth and other discontents the spin Roizen has put on beer consumption makes more sense than the original argument. I am aware that one should never generalize from a single example but I did it anyway. Gus Seligmann Subject: Re: DUI and wine To: [log in to unmask] --------------- Text of forwarded message --------------- X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Approved-By: Ron Roizen <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 14:35:37 -0800 Reply-To: [log in to unmask] Sender: Kettil Bruun Society <[log in to unmask]> From: Ron Roizen <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: DUI and wine To: [log in to unmask] Robin -- 1. It's interesting that this paper suggests both that beer "accounts for" the bulk of alcohol-related problems and that hazardous beer drinkers "are more likely" to be youthful, single, males. Might we switch those verb forms around, however, and say instead that hellraising young males "account for" most alcohol-related problems and that these gents are "more likely to be" beer drinkers? 2. Abstract (paper too?) ignores the strong aggregate-level trend relationship between spirits consumption and cirrhosis mortality -- also an "alcohol-related problem." Beer's trend relationship with cirrhosis (as Terris noted so long ago) was nil in the U.S. Ron Roizen, ph.d. consultant sociologist http://www.roizen.com/ron/index.htm ---------- From: Robin Room <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: DUI and wine Date: Friday, January 12, 2001 1:54 PM Martin -- the differences are much more likely to be due to who drinks the different beverages, under what circumstances, than to any metabolic differences between beverages. Below is a reference from Medline which will get you started. Robin J Stud Alcohol 1999 Nov; 60(6):732-9 Beer drinking accounts for most of the hazardous alcohol consumption reported in the United States. Rogers JD, Greenfield TK Alcohol Research Group, Public Health Institute, Berkeley, California 94709, USA. OBJECTIVE: Patterns and correlates of hazardous drinking, defined as occasions in which five or more drinks were consumed in a day, were compared for wine, beer and distilled spirits. METHOD: From a probability sample of the U.S. adult household population, 2,817 respondents who had consumed at least one drink in the previous year were selected for analysis. RESULTS: The results show that, in the U.S., beer accounts for the bulk of alcohol consumed by the heaviest drinkers. Beer also accounts for a disproportionate share of hazardous drinking. Logistic regression analyses revealed that drinkers who consume beer in a hazardous fashion at least monthly are more likely to be young, male and unmarried, and less likely to be black than are other drinkers. Hazardous beer consumption is more predictive of alcohol-related problems than hazardous consumption of wine or spirits. CONCLUSIONS: Three potential explanations for the results are considered: advertising, beer-drinking subcultures and risk compensation. Additional research is urged in order to better specify the causal role of these and other factors in hazardous beer drinking. PMID: 10606483, UI: 20072499 ----- Original Message ----- From: Mac Marshall To: [log in to unmask] Sent: den 12 januari 2001 21:20 Subject: DUI and wine Dear Fellow KBS'ers, I'm forwarding this from another list because I suspect our group is more competent to answer these questions than is the Alcohol & Temperance History Group. If you respond to Martin Platts, please copy it to me (or to the KBS list), since I'm interested in the responses. Thanks, Mac Marshall Sender: Alcohol and Temperance History Group From: Martin Platts Subject: DUI and wine To: [log in to unmask] Has anyone on this list researched the breakdown of alcoholism and DUI in regards to wine consumption? I have contacte a number of organizations who generalize but never give actual specifics as to the statistical breakdown between wine, beer, and spirits. Does drinking wine with food travel through the blood stream at a slower rate than if one was consuming beer and spirits with the same food? What is the metabolic rate difference ratios in all three alcohol substances on say a 180 lb man and 135lb woman? Is wine is bottom of the DUI list of alcohol beverages in such cases? Government agencies have been very reluctant to disseminate the differences to me. This information I need for my forthcoming book "Visions on Wine." which hopes to cover both sides of the issue. Thank you. Martin Platts h.c.i.m.a. -----