Alcohol reforms miss the point
13th November 2010

Driving through Ashburton on a hot Thursday evening I notice two young women sitting cross-legged on the grass of the Borough school’s playing field, sharing a bottle of Bernadino. They are a picture of summer.

As I drive past the radio reports progress on the government’s alcohol reform bill. If it becomes law it will almost certainly remove the bottle of Bernadino from this happy scene.

The government has grazed across the 150 or so recommendations of the New Zealand Law Society to reform liquor laws in the face of growing unease about our booze culture. In doing so they have chosen to focus the spotlight of reform almost exclusively on the drinking behaviour of 18-20 year olds.

If the government’s bill becomes law this age group will face a zero blood alcohol limit for driving and a split drinking age of 18 for on-license consumption and 20 for off-license purchases. Adults will face fines up to $2,000 if they serve alcohol to young people without their parents’ permission.

Public health advocates criticise the reforms for appealing to populist sentiment while ignoring the real drivers of booze culture. They argue that 18-20 year olds comprise fewer than 10% of binge drinkers and that the reforms fail to address issues of advertising and price-cutting. Opposition speakers in parliament claim National is skirting the tough issues around alcohol law reform for fear of getting offside with middle aged voters and the powerful alcohol industry.

The focus on youth shows the government clearly bending to public pressure from recent high profile deaths of young people after binge drinking. They aim to turn back the clock on youth drinking which many believe has got out of hand since laws were relaxed a decade ago.

It’s hard to see the proposed changes to access and supervision having much effect on young people’s drinking habits. Even 35 years ago when I was just 17 and the drinking age was 21 we could still buy booze. If we couldn’t find it in Invercargill we drove up the road to Winton where they would slip us cartons of Speights from the back of the bottle store. Then we’d retire to somebody’s front room and get happily plastered, sitting on our cartons so nobody could knick our beer.

The question of supervision strikes a tender spot in kiwi culture. As a teenager I don’t remember anybody’s parents pulling me up for having alcohol in the first place, never mind the effect it was having. Perhaps they were quietly looking out for us, knowing that if they got too heavy we’d just go and drink somewhere less safe.

I took a similar approach with my own children and I am sure I would have driven them off if I had expected their friends to show up with parental permission before drinking in my home. This part of the proposed reforms will be unenforceable and probably counter productive.

What restricted my drinking as a teenager was not access or supervision but price - we simply couldn’t afford to buy a lot of booze. Alcohol was not a grocery item as it is today. It was not marketed aggressively through advertising and discounting, and there was certainly no youth market. In this context the government’s unwillingness to address price and advertising severely limits the usefulness of any reforms.

Underlying everything in this debate is our society’s deeper relationship with alcohol. I am no more of a drinker today than my parents were but that hasn’t stopped my children having the occasional bender any more than it stopped me when I was 18. For better or worse, alcohol is a rite of passage for our youth that sadly becomes a way of life for some in adulthood. As long as we allow alcohol to fill this role any law changes will be window dressing.