Money wise, they're a good thing. Health and safety wise, they're not.
University of Florida researchers demonstrated that by obtaining breath samples from college students as they exited bars. They used those samples to measure intoxication levels, rather than relying on the students' self reports.
Customers who took part in alcoholic drink specials, offered in promotions such as "happy hour," or "ladies night," or "all you can drink," were more than four times as likely to leave with a blood-alcohol level exceeding the legal limit for driving. That's four times as likely as customers who weren't taking part in a drink promotion, UF reports.
Narrowing down to students under 21, 68 percent who took advantage of a drink special had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit of .08. The percentage shrank to 32 percent of those aged 21 and older.
Those discounts were more important in the findings than the total number of drinks consumed in the day, the hours they spent drinking, the amount of money they spent or whether they were old enough to drink legally, says Dennis Thombs, a UF health education and behavior professor. Thombs led the research study, results of which are scheduled to appear this summer in the American Journal of Health Behavior.
The drinkers who gave their best breath to make these findings possible were 177 men and 114 women, 86 percent of them college students, at 15 bars in Gainesville during three nights in December 2006 and three nights in May 2007.
Virginia Dodd, another health education and behavior professor, recounts seeing students "who have blown a really high reading into the breath tester and said 'Wow! I got all that for $4."
Ladies Drink Free nights can cause widespread harm, she says, pointing out that young women who become highly intoxicated (drunk, smashed, hammered or tanked) are exposed to other risks. Such as leaving the bar with someone they don't know and having unprotected sex.
Other studies have found a direct relationship between alcohol promotions and the amount college students drink, Thombs says.
But they relied on students' self reports. Those memories may not be accurate and can't account for differences in body weight and alcohol metabolism, which can affect your level of intoxication, he says.
1 comment:
Very good food and value. Drink specials with a indianapolis coupons makes this a great date night.
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