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Crime, Gangs, and Souped-Up Booze

Fortified Alcohol Fact Sheet
Malt Liquor and Inner-City Communities Fact Sheet

 

Fortified Alcohol Fact Sheet

  • Fortified wines combine flavors, sugar, high-proof grape-based distilled spirits and other unknown chemicals to a wine base to produce beverages with 18 to 20 percent alcohol.

  • Cheap fortified wines sell for $1.00 to $1.35 for a 375 ml. (12.7 oz.) bottle. Leading brands are Canadaigau's Richards Wild Rose, Gallo's Thunderbird and Night Train, and Mogen David's MD 20/20.

  • Because of their low price, cheap fortified wines are the beverage of choice of poor, chronic, heavy drinkers. Small bottles of cheap fortified wines are known on the street as "short dogs," "mickeys," "poneys," and "mad dogs."

  • Typically, these products are designed to be consumed and sold in massive quantities -- 40 oz. containers are common, even 64-ounce bottles are being sold and people drink them in a single serving. Contrast that to the average serving of whiskey: a small shot glass or a shot of rum blended in a cocktail.

  • Advertising of fortified products is also deliberately targeting people of color. Malt liquors are already heavily marketed to youth, particularly African and Latino males in the inner city. Music videos and youth-oriented films, magazines and entertainment prominently feature fortified products. Many of the products have names to appeal to certain ethnic groups.

  • Because the drinks are strong and the containers are large, consumers drink too much of a too-strong product too quickly. They get very drunk and may also develop an addiction to this much stronger beverage.

  • According to Newsweek, addiction professionals have dubbed cheap, fortified wine "the most seriously abused drug in this country."

  • Treatment experts claim that fortified wines promote addiction, misery, and homelessness.

    This fact sheet is provided courtesy of the Ventura County Alliance on Alcohol Policy (VCAAP). For more information please call 385-7977.

Malt Liquor and Inner-City Communities
Fact Sheet

    • Malt liquors range in alcohol content from 5.6 percent (Colt 45) to 8.0 percent (St. Ides) by volume. Regular beer averages 4.6 percent alcohol by volume.

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    • Four, 12-oz. cans of malt liquor have as much alcohol as five to eight cans of beer. Malt liquor is often promoted in single, 40 oz. serving containers.

    • The average price in the Colonia Neighborhood for a 40-ounce King Cobra Malt Liquor is $1.09.

    • Malt liquor companies have profited by targeting poor African-Americans and Latinos. One marketing executive of G. Heileman Brewing Company estimated that African-Americans consumed 75 percent of Heileman's leading malt liquor, Colt 45.

    • The U.S. Surgeon General, the New York State Consumer Protection Commission, the Oregon Liquor Control Board, and many other state and local entities have criticized commercials for St. Ides Malt Liquor for appealing to youth, glamorizing gang activity, and linking alcohol to sexual activity. St. Ides' commercials have drawn fines from both the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the New York State Attorney's Office.

    • One 12-ounce can of regular beer has approximately the same alcohol as a standard "shot" of whiskey. All have an average of a half-ounce (.54 to .6) of alcohol. Drinking one 40 oz. bottle of St. Ives is equivalent to drinking a little more than five shots of whiskey.

    • A market brochure for Olde English 800 noted that the product is brewed for relatively high alcohol content (important to the ethnic market).

     References:
      "The Misery Market," Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1998
      "Homelessness," Alcohol Health and Research World, 11 (3) Spring 1989, p. 4
      "Banning the Saturday Night Special of Booze," Newsweek, March 10, 1986
      "Needs assessment survey," La Colonia Coalition Against Alcohol and Other Drugs, November 1996

    The Marin Institute produced this fact sheet for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other
    Drug Problems and was reproduced by the Ventura County Alliance on Alcohol Policy
    (VCAAP). For more information please call 385-7977.

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