Government Study Pays Students to Drink: Tax Dollars at Work

Here's an interesting use of taxpayer money. Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer for The Weekly Standard, recently gave a speech for a Hillsdale College event, in which he discussed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Project Number 1R01AA01658001A2. This was $400,000 in Federal funding for a study called 'Malt Liquor and Marijuana' in which students were paid at least $45 to buy four beers a day for three weeks. (Actually, according to the government web site, the funding was $783,474 !)

Apparently the State University of New York Buffalo study generated a lot of interest as over 600 human guinea pigs had participated previously. According to Hayes, this was a follow-up to a previous study done by the university where it was discovered that people who were drunk and high were more intoxicated than those who were just drunk.