Got sent this today. Thoughts?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 5:30 pm and is filed under alcohol and other drugs, health, justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Oh Iain!
Not all poor people are young, 
What about Joe Middle age on a low wage who likes his beers down at the pub? 
Why should the actions of a few ruin it for everyone else?
So this video is basically arguing for a price hike, which to me just means that the rich can still p*** up.
Anyone who drinks 33 standard drinks, especially if a chick, asian or short dude, is asking for it!
An alcoholic is going to find a drink one way or another anyway!
700, 000 NZers ? How do they define that? Are these the same people who tried to make out that alcohol was more dangerous than cocaine?
Because I know that, that was a spin 
See now Spud, that comment is exactly why I don’t often bother posting on Red Alert.
I’m asking for your feedback on something I was sent. I’m asking for your feedback on an issue we (Labour) and I have not yet formed a position on.
But what do you start your comment with? ‘Oh Iain!’ In other words you are attributing the stance in the video to me.
Whatever. Other than that bit, I appreciate your comment and look forward to what ever debate builds out of this.
I don’t know anyone who would be bad enough to drink and drive!
It’s a recession, let’s not be mean to families who like to buy some wine at the supermarket.
Second comment more like what I was hoping for, thanks.
“See now Spud, that comment is exactly why I don’t often bother posting on Red Alert.” – Cheers mate, see ya.
I wrote the second comment before I read your comment. I’m going.
People talk of the ‘horrors’ of Binge drinking without knowing what binge drinking is.
Heck – The New Zealand health service classifies Binge Drinking as anytime a person consumes 5 or more standard drinks in a sitting.
That means if I head out for a BBQ in the early afternoon and have 4 (1.2 standard) cans of beer over the course of a full afternoon / early evening then I’m binge drinking.
Its a mislabling to make it sound worse.
There are ways of loading up even with price increases. Straws is one way. There are many “intelligent” people out there who know how to make a $ streach.
If all we think that is required is a stick (Read taxes) then we dont have a handle on the underlying issue. Many here (in NZ not R.A )cannot enjoy a drink. Sure many of us may have over indulged, but that does not mean we turn violent, enter sexual relations, drink drive etc.
Just curious Iain on what the min $ value should this leathal dose cost?
…that comment is exactly why I don’t often bother posting on Red Alert.
Harden up. It’s a blog; people comment on it; they don’t always consider exactly what you were hoping for from comments before commenting.
Re the video: it’s propaganda from lobbyists and should be treated as such. Anti-alcohol lobbyists aren’t inherently more worthy than liquor industry lobbyists.
700, 000 NZers ? How do they define that?
It’s simple enough – you work out the number of drinks per day that will include a sufficiently shocking proportion of society, and declare it the number to qualify as a “binge drinker.”
Psycho Milt – I’m not bothered by WHAT people think. I love hearing arguments from all sides of any issue.
It just annoys me that whenever I do something like this – put a question up for discussion – that people automatically assume they know my position when I’m just looking for opinions. When I have a position on something, believe me, you know.
Perhaps I do just need to harden up. For now, I’ll shrug my shoulders.
Anyway, I like your point about propoganda. One side’s should never be considered more credible than the other’s.
Iain why has yet another comment gone into moderation?
As I asked you what it should cost for the min lethal dose, I will suggest that for me this is not the issue, as comment in censorship, it is our attitude towards alcohol that is at fault.
Both are our relaxed ways of viewing drunkeness and our means of policing this. Whilst not wanting a police state there should be some enforcement of anti social drunkeness. e.g. from TV at Eden Park that behaviour resulted in only 6 arrests, by this inactivity we are promoting by default our tollerance to this behaviour.
That video does look like a promotional one. What is the evidence to support the views in it?
I don’t drink alcohol, so the price doesn’t bother me personally one way or another. I don’t have a problem with the way people I know drink. They get a bit merry. No one gets hurt. What’s the evidence that low prices have resulted in binge drinking?
According to the way it’s reported, binge drinking has increased in the last decade or two. Is this true? If so, has the relative price of alcohol dropped in direct correlation to the rise in binge drinking?
The impression I get is that drinking to excess by a large number of people, is a cultural and/or peer group thing.
There does seem to be a problem with a relatively small number of people who drink & drive. Will higher prices stop that?
I have heard that supermarkets keep the price of alcohol low, but keep the price of other things, like fruit and veg, unnecessarily high. If that’s true, it doesn’t seem fair on us non-drinkers.
I have heard that binge drinking has reduced in the last 20 years. Of course the media keeps playing recycled footage of drinkers whenever a story about boozing comes up.
I don’t object to cheap alcohol in supermarkets, but do think fruit and veg should be cheaper. If Goff gets in GST will be taken off them, yee haa!
Iain, I did assume that the video was your view, I was and am tired and I don’t think very hard about things when I’m tired.
Headache and sore eyes too 
The “Oh Iain,” was meant lightheartedly,
Eastern European countries had experience with raising alcohol prices (by increasing taxes). True alcoholics would drink home-made beverages or products not meant to be consumed (or not in such quantities) containing alcohol, like… flavouring essence, I don’t kid you. A lot of people were poisoned, especially with the home-made stuff. For those not as desperate and with some money though not much, like teens, there was a supply of drinks smuggled from abroad or made in the country in small black market operations, e.g. disguised as fruit juice (with alcohol added).
Methinks binge drinking and other alcoholic problems are a symptom of social problems much deeper than the price of a standard drink. There are countries with lower prices where people do not binge drink. It’s clearly not about the price. To attack the price is easy, but this does not solve any problem, and may lead to a black market if successful. Or even if those people stop binge-drinking, the underlying problems will cause them to migrate to other ways of forgetting that life sucks, and I doubt those other ways will be much healthier.
All good, Spud. I should have taken it light-heartedly. Just a pet niggle of mine and you happened to be the one who did it when I was feeling stroppy.
Oh and may I add that talking about Tui in relation to the lethal dose in the vid does not make much sense. To overdose on alcohol, you need to drink not only lots of it, but within a time frame. I don’t know how many standard drinks there are in a beer bottle, but to drink so many bottles of beer in 1-2 hours to reach the LD does not seem realistic to me. One would fall asleep anyway before finishing. It’s the high alcohol content drinks like vodka that make it possible to consume enough alcohol before passing out to reach the LD. If you go official with this vid, a lot of people with discard it as cheap propaganda for suggesting you can drink yourself to death with beer.
It’s hard though because you don’t get any inflections with text. I’ve had my moments on this blog. Good to be made up
I am particularly interested in the claim regarding 33 standard drinks, that stood out for me here.
My first thought, before even watching the video, is that 33 standard drinks is only the median, and for some people it will be less. That idea was confirmed when I watched the video. Also, the distribution could be skewed, there’s no way to tell here.
Second thought was that many people may not know what a standard drink is, which may impair their ability to know how much they have drunk, although even a knowledgable person wouldn’t have any idea after drinking a few.
Then I wondered how this and the other statistics were calculated. I’d couldn’t find any of that info on the website mentioned when I did a quick look around. I’m not disputing the info but I wouldn’t quote it either.
Yeah, individuals need to know their limits.
Just as an aside, they are remaking the movie Arthur, I love that guy!
!
I don’t know how many standard drinks there are in a beer bottle, but to drink so many bottles of beer in 1-2 hours to reach the LD does not seem realistic to me.
You bet. How many standard drinks it is depends on the alcohol content, but you’d be looking at drinking somewhere around 30 cans of beer within a few hours. Good luck with that one.
Same with the alcopops. Try drinking 30 of those and the sugar would have you throwing up before the alcohol would.
The only drinks that you really have a chance of hitting 33 standard drinks with are the spirits – vodka etc. They are fairly cheap, but you can kill yourself immediately with Drano for a tenner – which isn’t really much of an argument for slapping an extra tax on Drano.
I saw this vid last night on tumeke and thought, wow, the anti-liquor mob is pretty slick with this ad: Nice Melusina for pointing out that drinking 33 beers is likely not going to top you within the timeframe required, unless that is your chosen mode of suicide. Also funny, at the end it says go to ‘yourshout.org.nz’, I went to ‘yourshout.co.nz’ by mistake and found a site selling all your distillery supplies hahaha, guess that’s a cheaper way to ‘drink yourself to death’/enjoy an alcoholic beverage without insane taxes!
The 700,000 NZ’ers stat is bollocks, no reasonable new zealander calls having 5 standard drinks while watching the rugby/having a bbq etc ‘heavy binge drinking’.
Herodotus thinks that there should have been (more)arrests for drunkenness at Eden Park, citing what the media show us as reason. I turned 1News off that night when this item was half way through. The first bit was rowing , from memory, then drunken “louts” at the rugby league. Was anyone actually hurt? Newspapers didn’t mention any. (No, I don’t condone bottle throwing, it’s dangerous)
Anyway, if that’s the news, then nothing newsworthy can have happened that day. Then yesterday, we had the contrasting, well behaved crowd at the Trotting Cup. How extraordinary! Wouldn’t have anything to do with who the respective sports attract now.
To me this borders on propaganda, as this video surely is. Time to re-visit the “News is Crap” thread.
33 beers, I don’t know who has 33, most people have trouble getting in to the 20 range! I agree with Andrew that having 5 standard drinks while is not ‘heavy binge drinking’ as most people don’t down the 5 with in half hour!
Go back to the 50s and look at the effect the 6 closed had, it only encourage and worsen NZ drinking problem. While hiking the price would soften the problem it won’t fix it.
This is a cultural/social issue! Your not going to fix the problem by acting acting like act condescending parents.
What temperance groovies refer to as our “culture” may to some part be caused by the very propaganda that is made around drinking. Don’t know how to insert the hyperlink, so you’ll have to c&p.
“Some anti-drinking advertising campaigns may be “catastrophically misconceived” because they play on the entertaining ‘drinking stories’ that young people use to mark their social identity, say researchers who have just completed a three year study of the subject.”
Source: University of Bath http://www.physorg.com/news116499329.html
Researchers from the Kellog Institute of Management, Northwestern University have claimed that the ads which concentrate on prohibiting people from over drinking actually provoke them to do so.
http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20100306/antidrinking-campaigns-hardly-any-usestudy-id-10102654.html
IMO, youths only live up to what’s almost expected of them these days, why else the crowds of police everywhere. The key might be to lay off the lecturing. It would be interesting to see a graph showing the correlation between the emergence of anti-drinking campaigning and the rise in binge drinking (if there is one, which I doubt).
Interesting also, who started this trend in Western Societies (they all have a binge drinking culture if their respective lobby groups are to be believed). Some answers are on this website: http://www.alcoholfacts.org/. Probably financed by the alcohol industry, but some balance can’t hurt . Look at the organisations described,
Where does ALAC get it’s information from? Them?
Melusina – Just as example I once downed 1.25 Jack and almost finished a hipflask of Tequlia at varsity(different colors makes it worse). I did this in about 2-3 hours (hot day?) and as a side effect I started acting like a total ****. Apparently this side effect saved my life because I threw it all up after a punch to the stomach.
Yes that dose can kill, but I have also seen hardcore spirit drinkers who need two liters a day to keep themselves straight.
Iain –
1/ I have been hearing a lot about low cost prices at supermarkets. Despite the odd bust I also hear that supermarkets are the hardest places for young (under 25) people to buy alcohol, because of the process and because they don’t care about a $50 sale while there is $500 x 6 waiting in a queue. I wonder if there is lobbying going on here?
2/ The big problem with price rises is the life cycle of kiwis. We have 4 distinct phases of adult life.
Young uni or first job – Not a lot of money, but communal living and what you do get can be dedicated to alcohol (finding a mate) or cars. The young adult will still find money for alcohol, regardless.
Family – Making more money or less on one income, heavy mortgage and spending it on kids, hangovers get in the way of family life, Very price sensitive (normally because each rise is multiplied). These are the ones who will be impacted by price hikes (if Alcoholics from young adult will go without other things, if not will drop social activity around drink).
Empty Nest Free at last, More money, but body breaking down. Hangovers feel worse, cannot hit lethal dose because spending half the time expelling it from body.
Retired – No money left, unless horse comes in, but cant be bothered leaving the house, so no one notices.
So true Jeremy
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I went out drinking tonight!
Pity the price of the booze has hiked twice this year 
Still, had a good time 
NZ is one of the few countries where you can legally buy and operate a still!! If you tax alcohol heavily those addicted will just make their own (the Russian Air Force pilots used to drink de-icing fluid and spread boot polish on to bread so the alcohol would soak into the bread).
Remember the phrase “it’s not what we drink it’s how we are drinking”.
Every rugby team in the NPC (or whatever it is called) has a beer logo on their shirt; alcohol sales prop up many sports clubs, without these they would be dead. What is needed is some way of creating a culture of social drinking that isn’t self destructive. (just don’t ask me how to achieve that!!)