The booze keeps flowing in Iowa and the drinks being tipped back are more expensive. Lynn Walding is the Administrator of the State Alcoholic Beverages Division. Walding says liquor sales were up over 26-percent in August, and he says if that keeps up, the state will see sales of 160-million dollars for the fiscal year. Walding just closed the books on the latest fiscal year and says liquor sales were up nearly seven-percent to 146-million dollars. He says that’s the 10th straight year of increased sales in terms of dollars and he says the last two years had seen double digit increases in sales. Walding says while the dollar amount sold has gone up, the amount of alcohol hasn’t changed that much. He says consumers are “trading up” buying more expensive drinks. He says the amount of dollars spent on alcohol are up 10-percent, as he says alcohol appears to be an “affordable luxury.” He says there are several reasons for that switch. He says demographics are one reason as the 21 to 29 year-old group continues to grow at a rate of two-percent per year, creating more people of legal drinking age. Walding says higher transportation prices will likely not have much impact on liquor. And he doesn’t expect people to cut back on buying alcohol even though they’re shelling out more for gasoline. He says from their experience they sometimes have better alcohol sales during “hard” times than they do during good times. He says there seems to be a reverse relationship. Walding says drinking spirits for celebration and recreation has becomes a year-round thing for Iowans like drinking beer used to be. In fact, he says beer sales dropped off by one half percent in the last fiscal year that ended June 30th.
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