Melissa Clarke: Australians may be purchasing and consuming contaminated spirits straight off the shelf of their local bottle shop. Research published today offers a glimpse into illicit alcohol sales in Australia. Researchers say they fear illicit alcohol sales are widespread and could include clubs, bars and even restaurants. Tanya Dendrinos reports.
Tanya Dendrinos: When buying your spirit of choice at the local bottle shop, have you ever stopped to read the label or questioned a price that looks too good to be true? It might be worth doing, according to Dr Michaela Kowalski, a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She’s researching illicit alcohol sales in Australia.
Michala Kowalski: I am really worried that we’re at the tip of the iceberg.
Tanya Dendrinos: Dr Kowalski and researchers from Curtin University are today publishing their research into alcohol that’s manufactured and or distributed illegally, which can contain harmful substances. It’s based on findings from four bottles of vodka purchased at licensed retailers in affluent areas of Melbourne. Three were suspected of being illicit and after analysis, two of them raised serious questions.
Michala Kowalski: The first bottle came back with a type of plasticiser that’s banned by the European Union at certain concentrations. The amount that we found in it far exceeded that and it also had low levels of methanol. The second bottle had a different type of plasticiser in it at a lower level than the first one did. But this bottle also had methanol in it at levels that are much, much higher than those that are kind of allowed by the regulator here in Australia, the Food and Safety Authority.
Tanya Dendrinos: It prompted a significant follow up.
Michala Kowalski: We’ve now been to over 200 bottle shops across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. We’ve found illicit alcohol products, products that we suspect to be illicit in 30% of all the bottle shops that we’ve gone to.
Tanya Dendrinos: Testing of those products to confirm if they are illicit is underway, but Dr Michela Kowalski fears this could span far beyond bottle shops. She’s calling for a whole of government approach to tackle the issue, which isn’t limited to vodka.
Michala Kowalski: There’s things that can change in the regulatory environment that could make an impact. For instance, right now, legally, if you run a bottle shop, you’re not actually required to see if your supplier is licensed and if everything’s above board.
Tanya Dendrinos: Dr Hester Wilson is an addiction medicine specialist and the alcohol and other drugs spokesperson at the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
Hester Wilson: People are going into a bottle shop believing that they’re buying good quality regulated alcohol and people on a budget or young people will tend to go for the cheapest stuff, but you still think that it is alcohol and you’re not for a moment thinking that it’s contaminated with a poison like methanol.
Tanya Dendrinos: Methanol can’t be tasted in alcohol and can have serious health impacts.
Hester Wilson: So it damages your optic nerve, which means you can become blind and it also damages your brain and that can cause problems with headaches, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, sudden blindness, seizure, comas and death. This is super serious.
Melissa Clarke: Dr Hester Wilson there from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, ending that report by Tanya Dendrinos.