Alcohol sales zoom 62%

Despite Utahns' reputation for drinking little, state liquor stores and licensed restaurants are now selling a staggering 62 percent more alcoholic beverages by volume than they did a decade ago.

But such increases may not mean that Utahns are drinking more alcohol overall, just that they are drinking more of the "harder" alcoholic drinks available from the state liquor and wine stores.

The big hike in sales is not just from growth in population. When controlling for that by calculating consumption on a per-person rate, those sales have foamed up by 24 percent since 1996.

"Now it seems like every day is the day before Christmas" at crowded state stores, said Kenneth Wynn, director of the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

To explain, the Beer Institute estimates that beer sales here — including the low-alcohol (3.2 percent) beer sold in grocery and convenience stores — dropped 4.7 percent over the past decade.

Because beer far outsells other types of alcohol here, when the sales decrease from beer is coupled with the increase in purchases of other harder drinks, the result is an overall 2.5 percent drop in per-person consumption of alcohol of all types since 1996.

Helping to confirm that, the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health says its annual surveys show that overall use of alcohol has decreased over the past decade. "So, I think maybe we are seeing a change in where people are buying alcohol, with more people going to state liquor stores," said Brent Kelsey, assistant director of that division.

Wynn said similar shifts may be happening nationally. "I went to a convention recently where August Busch IV (president of Anheuser-Busch, Inc.) talked to us. He said his company's beer sales have been down 4 or 5 percent over the past five years or so, and that his company is looking to go into the liquor business" with some harder drinks.

Wynn said about increases of state sales, "We just kind of shake our heads and don't know why it is happening. We just know that there is a growing market, and we are trying to keep it supplied."

That increase is also benefitting the state treasury by nearly doubling collections over the decade from a special tax on alcohol to help the school lunch program; more than doubling the profits from liquor stores, which go to the state general fund; and more than doubling the sales taxes from alcohol. Annual treasury benefits from such sales are now nearly $70 million.

Some changes in Utah's population may also help explain, in part, the increase in sales of harder drinks.