Beer taxes and STD rates– Obviously.
So the author here is trying to “prove” that cheap beer is the leading contributor to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. He even uses a government report that claims increasing the tax on a 6-pack of beer by 20 cents could reduce gonorrhea by up to 9 cents.
This is very interesting to me. Although I think that alcohol and STD s have some bearing on each other, they are not that directly related. The studies used did not consider other variables that may have affected the rates for gonorrhea. Also, this article only looks at a single sexually transmitted disease. What about syphilis or chlamydia? Or how about HIV and HPV. Does increasing the tax on a 6-pack really affect all of these–not likely.
It’s kind of funny to think about but i don’t see it as logical.
February 16th, 2011 at 9:26 AM
I think this is a very good observation to the article, I mean why would the author only say that a beer tax would decrease gonorrhea? This makes no sense. It seems that he took this approach very narrow-minded and did not look at all of the possibilities of what this could affect. I agree with what you said in this post.