The headlines scream – “Alcohol killed our lovely daughter”, but the sad truth is that alcohol alone was not the cause. It is time for those who march against alcohol laws to take a long hard look at themselves when they question this society’s current binge drinking problem.
We should get a couple of things straight right here. First is that the way we drink is socialised according to our cultural norms. Any group of Kiwis talking social occasions will glorify their consumption, especially the occasions when they drank too much and got ‘smashed’, ‘sotted’, ‘destroyed’ and any of the dozens of common descriptions of being out of control on alcohol.
Finding a blame for this cultural problem we should start with history, with our roots in the Northern European cultures of the English, Scots and Irish in particular, where binge drinking is deeply ingrained. In Italy, public drunkenness is known as “the English problem”. That should make it clear enough.
We could also spend some time considering the frontier culture of most of recent New Zealand history, where men gathered in dingy surroundings with the express purpose of drinking themselves into some sort of oblivion. The pub, the team (all male), its stories and hard-drinking culture are the defining features of Kiwi machismo.
So it is not surprising that the wannabe-male egos of professional women in this country, the young lawyer and other executive products of mid-20th century feminism, should adopt a similar, mono-gendered culture of binging. The irony is that frontier booze culture was sustained by the actions of early feminists who fought for suffrage and prohibition with equal passion a century ago.
The weapon then was to constrain alcohol consumption by legal restriction. Six o’clock closing, dry areas, limited hours and even banning women from serving alcohol were all applied in the name of change. Instead of reducing alcohol abuse, what was delivered was a liquor industry that remained immune to change for a century, in which the male, isolated, marginal environment of licensed premises made men the overwhelming majority of alcohol abuse victims.
By the time liberalisation of those misplaced restrictions began, with wine allowed to be served in restaurants in the early 1960s, binge drinking in New Zealand was astonishing, and amongst adult males, almost universal. Since then binge drinking has not only been significantly reduced, its worst effects have been spread more evenly across the community, with women now as likely to be booze abusers as men.
It is startling how effective liquor legislation liberalisation has been in New Zealand in reducing alcohol abuse, in particular the reduction in per capita consumption since liberalisation. However, just as it is not possible to legislate away cultural mores, nor is easing restrictions the only solution to such deep-seated social problems. All liberalisation has given us is an environment in which cultural change is possible, but it needs the will of the culture at large to make those changes, and most particularly it demands parents to initiate that change.
Sadly, parents who have been unable to change their own family behaviour want a return to the failed policies of the past, not so much to address the problem of binge drinking, but to in some way assuage their own guilt at the cost to their children’s lives.
The specious arguments in support of legislative change, of increased control, from anti-liquor researchers and public health advocates are little more than self interest. The evidence in New Zealand is that increased legislative control cements the problem in place, while liberalised control reduces and equalises it. Ensuring binge drinking survives into the forseeable future may be an ideal solution for those whose income depends on researching the problem, not fixing it, but it is surely not an option for a society struggling to meet the human and economic costs.
Arguing for legislative change carefully avoids the central fact in our so-called “youth drinking” problem, that most underage drinkers in this country get their booze from their parents. And when they get their alcohol, it is not around the dinner table in a family environment, because most young New Zealanders no longer eat in such family situations, but as supplies for their parties. Parties which are the means of perpetuating a binge culture from one generation to the next.
There has been no greater example of the real problem we face with binge drinking than the reaction of King’s College parents to that school’s attempts to manage alcohol availability at school functions in the wake of a number of tragic binge drinking episodes. The parents objected, and set about undermining the school’s position on the subject with their children.
The headlines should be – “Parents are killing their children with booze”. Until parents accept the challenge, that reducing binge drinking is their responsibility, nothing will change.
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At last Keith, I agree with you! As a society we need to mature so that getting drunk and being outrageous is an embarrassment and something that society shuns. Probably a long term campaign similar to the campaign against smoking would achieve a societal change in attitude towards excessive alcohol consumption and drunkenness. Restricting liquor outlets and increasing the drinking age didn’t work in the past and it wont work in the future. Attitudes need to change!
Hi Keith – a good take on the current problem of teenage excess drinking. As a parent of two teenagers at a private school it astounds me the lengths some parents will go to ensure that “Mary” or “Johnny” are not deprived of drinking events like after-ball functions. I understand that many of these parents are trying to facilitate a “safe-environment” for such events, but in the long run I think this is misguided. One of the issues is that the present drinking age of 18 means that in any secondary school in New Zealand we have a combination of year 12 and 13 students – some who are of drinking age and some not. How much easier would it be for our public and private schools if the drinking age was increased to 20 I wonder?
You know I’d never though of it the way you have put it, and I agree with you.
Sure attitudes do need to change, the challenge now is how the hell is this going to be achieved. Certainly media does have a role in the way it reports on the whole problem, but I fear that perhaps most journalist are not as enlightened as you Keith.
I’m not happy about plans to increase costs of alcohol, I enjoy the occassion drink with dinner, but I am keen to see the blood alcohol level dropped to a more realistic level.
I also thing that by stigmatising alcohol we are sending the message to young people that it is an exciting, forbidden product (and therefore perpetuating the harmful consumption culture). Education and an ingrained understanding of the benefits of moderate consumption is a much better approach.
Hi,
I am a reporter interested in the chicken labelling article. Can you please tell me what contamination in chickens is being talked about please. Sounds really interesting.
Thanks,
Yvonne