PHOENIX (Thursday April 21, 2011) -- Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and his colleagues from 17 states have released a letter to the Pabst Brewing Company calling on the brewer to significantly change its marketing strategy and lower the alcoholic serving content for its new Blast malt beverage. Sold in brightly-colored packaging that appears designed to attract young consumers, the drink also contains enough alcohol in a 23.5 ounce container to quantify as binge drinking if consumed on one occasion. Binge drinking is defined as men drinking five (women drinking four) or more servings of alcohol in an hour. Such drinking can raise a person’s blood alcohol level concentration to 0.08 grams percent or more, putting a person at significant risk for legal intoxication.
“I am joining my fellow Attorneys General in denouncing both the alcohol serving size and marketing efforts for this new drink,” Horne said. “It is evident that this beverage is designed to attract young people and contains enough alcohol in one serving to constitute a threat to public health and safety. It is rightly being described as a ‘binge in a can’ because, with an alcohol content of 12 percent in a 23.5 ounce can, it reaches the threshold of nearly five servings in one can, which meets the federal definition of binge drinking. A person who drinks this amount of alcohol and gets behind the wheel is an even greater menace to health and safety. I urge the Pabst Brewing Company to reduce the number of servings of alcohol in each container and to forgo the cynical marketing of a clearly dangerous beverage to anyone, especially youth.”
A copy of the letter is attached.