Hello Everyone,

Its a pleasure to be here today. My name is Harsh shah. I am a post graduate

student in the school of business at centennial college. I recently listened to an
interesting episode on cbcs radio show with host Piya Chattopadhyay entitled A
new synthetic alcohol promises good times drinking without the headaches and
hangovers. Which was originally aired on 11 th of October 2016 on CBC tv. This talk
will take about 6-7 minutes and the presentation is divided into 3 sections. First I
would like to talk to you about what is alcosynth, secondly I would like to share the
beliefs and concerns of our 3 guest speakers DAVID NUTT, creator of Alcosynth, a
synthetic alcohol. He's a professor of neuro psycho pharma cology at Imperial
College in London, England), Mark Haden is an Adjunct Professor at the University
of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health, and Christine
Sismondo, a historian and the author of America Walks Into a Bar
, and finally I would like to discuss whether age and poverty contribute to misuse of
alcohol.

What is Alcosynth?

According to David Nutt, Alcosynth is a substance which has been developed to go

into drinks, so it will go into a cocktail the same way as you might put a rum into a
pina colada, youll put an Alcosynth into a pina colada, so youll have the same
flavour as you normally drink. But this would not damage your liver, heart and your
brain. Youll get the same good effects without the bad effects. You also won't get so
much of a hangover either because as there won't be toxicity of alcohol in the brain.

How does alcosynth differ from distilled alcohol?

Alcosynth looks like a solution that goes into a drink. Some of them are more milky
and some of them are more just like clear, like gin. All the alcohols you drink, even
vodka, are flavoured, because alcohol by itself tastes horrible. Alcosynth itself
doesn't taste very good, It's not a drink in itself, it is a substrate for a drink. This is a
substance designed through pharmacology and neuroscience to mimic the effects of
alcohol. Alcosynth is made to be pharmaceutical level of safety. So it is safe enough
to be given to people who are ill. And also its got no calories, because for a lot of
people, a significant proportion of the calories they take in are from alcohol.
Its basically designed to be about the equivalent of about three drinks. So you'll get
pleasantly intoxicated, but you won't get blind drunk. No one is drinking alcosynth
since 60 years like in case of alcohol, so its longterm effect is unknown. But they
assure that it meets the highest safety levels that is required of a medicine that will
be given in the long term.

Target market?

The target market for alcosynth are the people that care about their health,
probably young professionals and the next generation, those people who haven't
yet started drinking. because that would have enormously beneficial health impact
if people never drank alcohol and only drank Alcosynth.
Further speaking about the opinions and concerns of 3 guest speakers:

DAVID NUTT: (creator of alcosynth)

According to David Nutt , he wants alcosynth to be sold in bars and drunk in bars
so people will then engage in the right use of alcohol. According to him Alcohol
should be used socially, to improve communication and social interaction amongst
friends and colleagues, it should be used to facilitate discussion and debate. It's not
something that should be swilled in front of the television and So he is not going to
sell it in stores and will sell it only in licensed bars.

Mark Haden

According to Mark Haden alcosynth is a product of interest and he is certainly

interested in trying to find the researchers who might be willing to take a look at it
and see what it actually does. He added that Alcohol is so incredibly harmful to our
society & we should find something that people like a little bit better than alcohol,
which would bring us as a society back on right track & based on very preliminary
observations, it looks like it isn't addictive.
He doesnt have any concerns yet, because no one knows much about
alcosynth yet. He also added that many drugs have come down the pipe
have been touted as being absolutely fabulous but proved wrong.

Christine Sismondo.

Contrary to the 1st 2 speakers the first thing that bothers to Christine Sismondo is
about the idea that most of people drink to get drunk and to taste specific tannins
or vanillins in wine or whiskey. Hardly someone drinks to get high. There's an idea of
safety that's being sort of floated in this whole thing, but a lot of the risks from
alcohol are not actually from the toxins that, a lot of the risks to alcohol involve
being out in clubs and making bad decisions, involve falling down, involve drinking
and driving. And nobody's really addressing any of these issues. Alcosynth shares
nothing in common chemically with alcohol. So it should be marketed as a party
drug rather than a substitute to alcohol. synthetic opioids caused a huge problem.

She is concerned that there are these unintended consequences with these drugs
that we don't really know very much about. We can't really see how they're going to
get used or what effects they're going to have. But we know how alcohol affects our
health. She thinks it takes away a lot of the charm and the mystery that sort of feel
that alcohol has. most people as they grow up, they become better at it all on their
own.

And a lot of the misuse of alcohol has to do with age and probably poverty because
In western countries under aged gets access to alcohol easily as it is sold in stores
and poverty leads to consumption of bad quality alcohol which is very harmful to
the health.
Now to recap what we discussed. We talked about what is alcosynth and how it can
be used with alcohol to reduce the after effects of alcohol consumption and the
views of the 3 guests about alcosynth.
I would like to Conclude that Smoking kills six million people a year and alcohol four
million. Its 2nd leading cause of premature deaths. Though alcosynth is not a
treatment for alcoholism, It actually stops people ever becoming over alcoholic.
This brings to the end of my talk. Thank you for your kind attention.