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MELBOURNE - Australia's major alcohol producers have reacted to community concern about ready-to-drink (RTD) products by dumping those with high alcohol content and energy additives.
The move was immediately welcomed by hotel and alcohol abuse groups, who say the drinks have contributed to growing problem drinking among young people and trouble at late-night venues.
Foster's Group and Lion Nathan today said they would voluntarily cease manufacturing alcoholic drinks with energy additives such as caffeine and taurine.
They will also limit alcohol volume in other RTDs to seven per cent, or two standard drinks per single serve.
The move sees the dumping of Foster's Cougar Volt and Karloff Energy high energy drinks, and reducing the alcohol content of the Cougar XX bourbon and coke can.
Lion Nathan will drop its McKenna Bourbon and Energy drink, and reduce the alcohol content of its McKenna Bourbon and Cola and Inner Circle Rum and Cola products.
Foster's Australia, Asia & Pacific managing director Jamie Odell said the real issue was not bad products, but poor drinking behaviour.
"However, we also acknowledge community concern that higher alcohol and added-energy RTDs may be particularly vulnerable to abuse," he said.
Lion Nathan managing director Andrew Reeves also said excessive alcohol consumption was a cultural problem.
"We recognise that there is a level of community concern about these products and therefore we have decided to remove them from circulation," he said.
Australian Hotels Association (AHA) Victorian chief executive Brian Kearney applauded the move and said it followed ongoing discussion about the problem across the industry.
Mr Kearney said some hoteliers had already stopped selling RTDs with energy additives late at night.
"I think the concerns that generated this response ... are particularly with the combination of alcohol and energy drinks, particularly in that volatile late-night environment which can contribute to behaviours that are inappropriate," he said.
"People just get hyped up and that's not helpful in terms of managing the late-night environment."
Dr Mike MacAvoy, chief executive of responsible drinking advocacy group DrinkWise Australia, said energy-added alcohol RTDs created a "wide-awake drunk".
"The influence of caffeine of course is to stimulate people and some of them had quite large amounts of caffeine in them, so you wound up with people who were not only intoxicated, but also hyperstimulated, as it were," he said.
"That in itself leads to all sorts of problems."
Dr MacAvoy said the move to voluntarily limit alcohol content to two standard serves would help people judge how much they were drinking.
"Some of these products were getting quite high in alcohol content and people were often unaware, because of the way they were flavoured and so forth, just how much alcohol they were consuming," he said.
Alcohol Related Brain Injury Australian Services (arbias) general manager John Eyre said the move was important to help reduce the growing issue of problem drinking in young people.
"We're seeing a younger demographic of people coming through our doors, much younger, and these sorts of drinks are attractive," he said.
"Those drinks were high-tech marketing to encourage younger people to drink, and we know what happens to their brain when they drink those sorts of quantities that they do."
- AAP
