Today I received a letter from Alcohol Action NZ and although I don’t totally agree with their five-step solution to solving New Zealand’s drinking problem, they brought some compelling data to my attention:
• At least 25% of all New Zealand drinkers are heavy drinkers
• A third of all police apprehensions involve alcohol
• Half of all serious violent crimes involve alcohol
• 60 different medical conditions are caused by heavy drinking
• Up to 75% of adult presentations at Emergency Departments on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are alcohol related
• Over 300 alcohol-related offences every day
• Over 500 serious and fatal injury traffic crashes every year
• 17,000 years of life per-year are lost through alcohol
Also some interesting comments on my blog yesterday about alcohol reform:
1: Queenstown is a party town, The tourists clearly want this drinking as they are participating in it. Those vomit cleaners are in employment because of this and that is food in their mouths.
2: They (tourists) shouldn’t be shocked as plenty of them are partaking in the exercise themselves!
3: I remember when the minimum school leaving age was raised in the UK from 15 to 16. There was much resentment for a couple of years from those who considered they were being forced into an additional unnecessary year of school. Now, of course, no 14 year old Brit considers 15 as a natural age at which to leave school, and hasn’t for a couple of decades.
I wish I could be around such intelligent, witty and insightful people more often!
“A third of all police apprehensions involve alcohol”
It has been mooted that being drunk in a public place should be an offence…imagine the drain on police resources if that was the case.
Cigarettes kill. There is no safe way of smoking. So there is a justification for control..Alcohol, however, does not in itself kill, unless it is misused. So why do we not look at ways to stop the misuse by the minority rather than punish the majority. Why should the majority not be able to drink when they like, and where they like, from the age they are deemed suitable to vote and fight – ie 18 years.
John said:
Ah, the minority you speak of which is at least 25% of adult NZ’ers.
OK it is a minority. A darn big one.
Loota says: “Ah, the minority you speak of which is at least 25% of adult NZ’ers.
OK it is a minority. A darn big one.”
The stats Raymond quotes says that 25% of those who drink are ‘heavy drinkers’, not 25% of adult NZers.
One has to bare in mind that Alcohol Action NZ as a pressure group has its own agenda, so before gasping with horror at the stats it has put out I’d like more info on how they’ve defined terms.
What does it means by ‘heavy drinking’ for example?
A couple of drinks a night? Or getting totally plastered three nights a week? I bet their definition is nearer the former than the latter.
Many pressure groups redefine things with unreasonably low thresholds for their own ends. I suspect that may be going on here.
Hi George, sorry my misread there, thanks.
I suspect the comment:
is a piss-take (sorry for bad pun).
Good blog Ray.
On another, somewhat related, note.
Why is Labour MIA (again!) on the massive, appalling Bill that even Maxim- supported research is slamming. http://maximorgnz.sites.acclipse.com/assets/784b3297-5838-4947-951f-363c11087a4a/files/docs/three_strikes_occasional_paper.pdf
“Ah, the minority you speak of which is at least 25% of adult NZ’ers.” – Just out of curiosity, how do they know without going into every home? :O
Let’s just say that it’s true for argument’s sake, it’s highly likely that a lot of those heavy drinkers are law abiding citizens who don’t harm others, so it’s not 25% of drinkers causing problems for society (if anything they are keeping publicans in moola) it’s 25% drinking over a certain amount.
What constitutes heavy drinking? I mean there are some people who are sober five days a week and then binge over the weekend. Now in terms of the number of drinks that they have they are heavy drinkers, but they are not in the same league as an alkie who must drink from dawn to dusk. And there’s the people who drink moderately every day, but it adds up to a lot over a week, are they considered to be heavy drinkers?
@George – good point, a lot of those drinkers would be underaged! I see you are I are in agreement about the binge drinking, cheers
@Toad –
Last week I delivered some of the 22,000 postcards from Alcohol Action NZ which are to be sent to MPs. Many I hope to John Key and Simon Power for the hypocrisy they have prsented to NZ. Alcohol vs tobacco or is it Tobacco vs Alcohol!
I delivered postcards to the local A&E staff. The problem is not only on the weekend, it is Tuesday nights and Wednesday mornings! The mid week binge!
I might suggest the statistics put out by Alcohol Action might be on the conservative side!
For good information and discussion go to http://www.progressive.org.nz for thoughtful and considered comment by Jim Anderton. The Progressive Party has been campaigning on this issue since 2005.
D said:
Maxim, the lad’s magazine with the model girls??? WHAT THE?
Oh, I see. Ahem sorry.
Simple answer (my guess) is that Labour hasn’t figured out a way of opposing it while being accused by NACT of being “once again more concerned about crims than victims, and of course, being typically soft on crime”. NACT have this trap all set up you see.
SO: this is what you can do.
Actually be HARDER in some of the bills provisions i.e. target loopholes where serious offenders can currently wriggle out (for instance the report says that a serial rapist with 10 victims before being caught and tried qualifies for just one strike).
And then to offset being harder in a couple of notable areas, insist that the bill needs to be fairer in others.
When/if the Bill passes, make it clear that there are still many provisions in it which are still unacceptable to Labour and set the ground up for action later on when in power.
For good measure, also link the Bill in context to a whole lot Labour oriented crime prevention and rehab programmes.
Labour should be “tougher on crime” than National, while at the same time using the fist within a soft velvet glove.
“I might suggest the statistics put out by Alcohol Action might be on the conservative side!” – I doubt that AANZ would down play percentages, no incentive for them to do that.
Did anyone else see that 60 mintues? piece on that alcoholic woman who went to Australia to get craving blockers and ended up a new woman? (I think I have my facts right).
“It has been mooted that being drunk in a public place should be an offence…imagine the drain on police resources if that was the case.”
Yeah like if it was an offence and treated as one, no one would change their behaviour – just as everyone still drinks and drives …
There’s nothing inherently bad about being drunk in public, there is something bad about being drunk (or sober) and damaging property. You see it’s not the drinking that is bad about drunk driving
It’s the adding the car to the drunken person 
Just as driving tired is often a bad idea, drinking is driving tired on steriods 
Not poor alcohol’s fault
So – you say to those who misbehave while drunk, it’s not the drinking that’s the problem, it’s your behaviour while you are drunk … So keep getting drunk, just change the behaviour afterwards?
Do you support compulsory ID cards for drinkers and taking these cards way from those who offend/re-offend while drunk, the same way we take a license off a drunk driver?
“Do you support compulsory ID cards for drinkers and taking these cards way from those who offend/re-offend while drunk, the same way we take a license off a drunk driver”
No because people who offend while drunk and get caught are going to have their behaviour noted by the police anyway, they have to produce ID then. Plus bars can ban patrons who give them grief. ID cards are asked for by the youngens anyway. But I do kinda have an issue with that, you might not necessarily want someone knowing your name and age, could be a stalker.
Plus the cards would be expensive to implement and people would have to pay for them and it would be a hassle, and worst of all 
… it would make the booze queues slower 
Yes, change the behaviour whilst drunk, and if you can’t, then change your drink or your environment so that you don’t become a menace.
To me, if you actually want to stop drinking there are two really big areas that need addressing. Raising the drinking age isn’t going to do a lot, especially for the 16 year olds and such who get drunk by nicking stuff from their parents. Raising the price isn’t going to do much because you can still get a bottle of cheap wine or scrumpy for not much. It’s just going to mean that people drink faster and mix more to get drunker on less.
Two areas that I really, really think need addressing are advertising and education.
The ban of advertising cigarettes was a big move towards de-romanticicing them. However, every beer ad (at least the cheapest ones like Tui and Export) show parties that are incredibly dull until someone opens a beer. You can tell people till you’re blue in the face that booze is bad, but when they turn on the T.V they see booze as some magical substance that gives you confidence, social skills and some euphoric feeling. Who are young people going to believe, the T.V or teachers and government?
Addressing education is also crucial. I know from personal experience that un-experienced drinkers drink dangerous. I first got drunk when I was 14 and I believe that if I hadn’t spewed my guts out, I would have died. For starters, no one had even told me that there was an alcohol percentage written on the bottle. No one had told me that mixing is a bad idea. No one told me the dangers of sculling. I had no idea about sensible drinking, all I really knew was friends had talked about sculling beers at parties and having a great time.
So, when I ventured into my parents alcohol cabinet and then in the period of about ten minutes proceeded to scull a glass of whisky, a glass of brandy, two glasses of cask wine and… a bottle of wine, I still didn’t think I was drunk. Until I woke up in a pile of vomit.
It’s high time we stop dodging around the idea of booze and accept that people are going to drink. Once we’ve done that, we can actually start educating people on how to drink responsibly.
Drinking is far more dangerous than cigarettes but I feel cigarettes have got a bad wrap as there’s not too many benefits. However, I’ve never seen anyone get into fights, crash a car, steal stuff or break stuff because they smoked a few too many cigarettes…
If people want to smoke, let them but educate them on the dangers and give them the means to stop when they decide they want to. We’re already doing this.
If people want to drink, let them but educate them on how to drink without acting like arses. We’re not doing that.
Just my two cents.
Good luck to Labour. I’m sending this from Japan and it breaks my little heart every time I read the New Zealand news. If National keeps up like this, I’m going to start telling people I’m Australian. They got Kevin Rudd, the States got Obama and we get Key. Not fair!
Many thanks James: this is the most valuable piece I have ever read from commentators on this subject. Thank you! I may quote you in my speeches when the Bill comes to the House – with your permission. Enjoy Japan. I’ve been there many times and the most recent one was last April on ANZAC Day.
Woah, thank you very much! By all means, that would amazing! Being in Japan makes me really appreciate just how great New Zealand is, but it’s crushing being here and reading all the stuff that’s going on. There seems to be so much inability to deal with the roots of problems, in favour of the black and white approach to only dealing with the products of problems.
Japan is a great place. It’s really fun being a teacher here. I’m sort of waiting to see how teachers are treated in New Zealand over the next year to see if I’ll do it when I get back. (Not looking hopeful)
Japan is great for the moment. I’m pretty rural but there’s a lot of things that remind me of New Zealand around, so it’s pretty cool. What were you doing here?:-)
This Red Alert idea is really good. Thank you for providing a forum where people can voice opinions and be heard.
I think the harm is obvious and increasing, what to do about it is another issue.
Teens drinking themselves to death
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/3752765/Young-teens-drinking-themselves-to-death
My ma could access alcohol at 13, this is not new and toughening up the laws won’t stop this kind of thing occurring.
I think parents would do well to sit their teens and tweens down and talk to them about alcohol poisoning. I had the talk about people drinking til their bodies couldn’t handle it. And about drugs and then I was sent on my merry way to parties with alcohol freely available and I used my common sense (I was 13).
Perhaps those teenagers were ignorant about percentages and alcohol poisoning, maybe even alcoholics. I know two people who became alcoholics as teenagers as the result of trauma in their lives.