Making alcohol more expensive does little to put off determined drinkers and may even make them drink more, a study has claimed.
Researchers from the US Prevention Research Centre studied alcohol sales in Sweden over a ten-year period. They found that price increases could in some cases actually encourage people to drink more instead of less.
Lead researcher Professor Paul J Gruenewald said the range of alcohol on offer, from high to low-end products, and different the types available, from beers and spirits to wines, made price increases across the board an ineffective deterrent to drinkers.
The team reported their findings in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Professor Raul Caetano from Texas School of Public Health, said: "In general the evidence suggests that as you increase taxes, and alcoholic beverages become more expensive, individuals tend to use alcohol less.
"However, the findings in this paper indicate that the reality is not so simple, because there are alcoholic beverages at different levels of price, and when you implement taxation, what happens is that the individuals who are able to purchase the alcoholic beverages that were more expensive just switch to less expensive ones.
"In fact, the paper shows that there may be situations where the intent of the taxation is reversed, in that alcohol consumption increases rather than decreases because the alcohol of choice has become cheaper. Basically, they buy more and end up drinking more."
The researchers said the solution could be to increase prices on cheaper drinks instead of more expensive ones.
The team studied sales by Systembolaget, the Swedish state monopoly supplier of alcohol until 1995. They found that when prices were increased by ten per cent it led to a 1.7 per cent fall in sales.
When the prices were increased on more expensive drinks, sales rose by 2.8 per cent instead of falling.
However, when the cost of the cheapest drinks was increased, overall sales fell by 4.2 per cent.
Professor Caetano concluded that price increases on cheaper drinks could be a more effective way to curb drinking in western societies.