Guess what?

When you put up the price of pre-mixed drinks, people buy more straight spirits. When they first suggested this price increase, I didn't think they'd really do it. But they raised the tax by 70% on pre-mixed drinks. Since then sales of pre-mixed drinks have dropped by 30%, sales of straight spirits are up 46%. The meaningful bit of data is that this represents 21 million more standard drinks. Wow, who would have thought that teenagers would find something else to drink? Or even more amazing, when presented with a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of coke, your average punter drinks more in a night than when drinking pre-mixed cans?

The industry body said they expected the sales to shift from pre-mixed to straight, but they didn't expect an increase. I don't know why not. It seemed like the most obvious outcome to me. Do they not remember being teenagers? Could they not see that taking a 6 pack of pre-mix to a party results in less alcohol consumption than a bottle of bourbon? Just how stupid are these people?