In our 'studies you don't need to read' category is this bit of economic insight from the February edition of Addiction;  the more alcoholic beverages cost, the less likely people are to drink. And when they do drink, they drink less.

After analyzing 112 studies spanning nearly four decades, researchers documented a concrete association between the amount of alcohol people drink and its cost. 

Yes, it was unclear before that we should make alcohol something only rich people can have, thus widening the social and cultural gap before have's and have not's even further.

The consistency of the association between cost and consumption indicates that using taxes to raise prices on alcohol could be among the most effective deterrents to drinking that researchers have discovered, beating things like law enforcement, media campaigns or school programs, said Alexander C. Wagenaar, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and health policy research at the University of Florida College of Medicine, and the senior author of the study.

Why does this need to be done?   Well, a journal like Addiction probably has researchers who blame the alcohol for alcohol addiction, much like some study out there will find a way to blame a spoon for making Rosie O'Donnell fat.

The answer is what you might expect; raise taxes.  Which will benefit government,  some say, but making alcohol more expensive makes it more likely to lead to crime and, if alcohol is so bad for you, it seems foolish to place more government services in a dependent state on a product making its  users less likely to work.

To obtain their findings, the researchers scoured through decades of studies examining links between price and alcohol use. The studies were all reported in English, but not limited to any single country. The data resulting from these reports were compiled and analyzed to glean more precise answers than can be obtained from just one study, Wagenaar noted. 

In a commentary in the same issue of Addiction, Frank Chaloupka, PhD, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes the research as a "true tour de force," and adds, "these findings provide a strong rationale for using increases in alcoholic beverage taxes to promote public health by reducing drinking."

Public health is not served by less alcohol, it's served by less alcoholics.    Many studies even on this two year old site show the health benefits of alcohol in moderation.

The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.