The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
What is it with the left and alcohol?
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What is it about alcohol that turns off the cognitive capacity of the intelligentsia? Why can’t lefty social critics deal with drinking problems? On Monday it was Richard Farmer in Crikey, on Tuesday Bernard Keane. What gives? Farmer laughed off the problem from the start. He reached back a century to disinter the language of the defeated temperance movement that inveighed against “the evils of drink.” None of the politicians he quoted think in those terms, so he is fighting a battle that ended decades ago. He dismissed reports of alcohol anarchy in Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia with the knock-out blow “per capita consumption has not changed over the past decade.” Ipso facto, there can’t be a problem. Game over. He’s wrong there, for a start: if a problem isn’t getting worse, it doesn’t mean there’s no problem. But his one-dimensional view that per capita consumption is the measure of the problem is years out of date. Public health people and the alcohol industry agree that patterns of drinking are as important as total consumption. Patterns of drinking account for phenomena such as sessional intake, frequency of drinking, the location, and collateral risks (e.g. swimming, driving). Take the simplest example: if Richard drinks three drinks per day and Bernard drinks 10 drinks on each of two days they virtually consume the same amount in the week, but the risks they face are different. Bernard will be intoxicated twice and subject to a range of acute harms due to loss of coordination and disinhibition, while Richard is less likely to suffer injury. If Bernard is a teenager, his risk of harm is multiplied. His sister Bernadette is at greater risk again. If he keeps it up over time, he will also risk chronic disease, disability and death. But there’s more. Relying on per capita consumption masks contrary movements among demographic groups. Older people drink less and Australia’s population is ageing. So we can expect per capita consumption to decline as the baby boomers age, but it doesn’t mean younger drinkers are safe, or that there are no problems, or even that problems among drinkers aren’t getting worse. For example, the proportion of secondary school children who drink at dangerous levels ballooned between 1984 and 2005: it rose for students aged 12-15 from 11% to 21% in 2005. For students aged 16-17 the increase was 28% to 42% (Hayman et al, Drinking behaviours of Victorian secondary students in 2005 and over time, 2006). Underage drinkers are bingeing at historical high levels while national per capita consumption is stable. This data is matched by increased hospital admissions for alcoholic overdose, particularly among females aged 15-24 (National Drug Research Institute, 2003). Everyone in the public health field and the alcohol industry knows per capita consumption in itself is inadequate as a measure of alcohol problems. Farmer’s sense of the issue is a relic. Bernard Keane’s piece in Tuesday’s Crikey was even more embarrassing. One wonders why he bothered. He is entitled to his view that the way people drink is nobody else’s business, and it might have been interesting had he actually argued that point, and followed up the implications, because he’s on his own there. Not even the alcohol industry agrees with that. But he didn’t need to argue anything because he knows it’s just “moral panic”, a term that requires no explanation, no evidence and no analysis. With acute irony Keane accused health advocates of lacking evidence for their views, offered none of his own, except to quote the hapless Farmer, and proceeded to misunderstand and misquote Professor Margaret Hamilton who has spent 40 years working in the field. A good question is why did these two who have done no work on this issue, and have nothing to contribute, feel the need to pontificate from afar and deny what is obvious to many Australians: that our collective use of alcohol is out of control and needs rethinking. It’s funny how the left continues to fall for it. The alcohol industry pockets the profits and socializes the costs, estimated at $15.3 billion per year (NHMRC, Draft Alcohol Guidelines 2007). What a good deal: the shareholders get the money and the taxpayer foots the bills for the ambulances, hospital beds, physicians, nurses, surgeons, social workers, police, solicitors, lawyers, barristers, magistrates, coroners, prison staff, drug workers, youth workers, etc. Not to mention the families with the unemployable brain-damaged, disabled, and diseased. Why doesn’t the left think alcohol? |
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20 Comments
Good article, Geoff! Note that it effectively refutes the implication in the “Dear Sole Subscriber” intro that Kevin Rudd’s views on binge drinking are not supported by evidence.
Bingeing does incredible damage to the developing brain and is encouraged by our drinking culture. My daughter tells me about kids in her year level bragging about getting “smashed” every weekend. They are 13 years old! Let’s start with our own attitudes.
Some of your points have merit, as far as I can tell, but… Keane and Farmer “lefty social critics”?! Where was I when that was decreed? Attacking a whole section of society (“the left”) for the views of a few is hardly constructive, anyway.
Richard Farmer and his brother once owned & operated the appropriately-named Farmer Bros liquor outlets in Canberra. He knows the A-Z on grog.
Nice response to the flaws in the per capita premise. Geoff could have mentioned that more recently the ready access to gaming machines has reduced theaverage drinkers ‘drinks budget’ and still no drop in per capita consumption!
Re “older people drink less”: Actually, the ABS seems to think 35-44 and 45-54 y.o. are now more likely to drink at risky levels, not Our Impressionable Yoof. So can the snarkiness about “the left” until you, too, have your facts straight. Link next post.
Typical of the left. Stop teens having a glass of wine but passing out needles for their iv heroin and condoms for their”safe” ( read suicidal ) sex.
“[he’d be] subject to a range of acute harms”. Wrong, he’s subject to the risk of being subject to a range of acute harms. If the harm was automatic then there’d be a lot more harmed drunken people. Try to be less alarmist.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/ProductsbyReleaseDate/DA2EE6E951E4F948CA257242001B1AFF?OpenDocument
An alcoholic is not ‘one who drinks’ - it is one who has difficulty in stopping drinking once they start. Should governments regulate this? I think not, we have enough nanny state crap as it is.
The Dutch have it right!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/05/nhealth105.xml
thank you for your thoughtful and considered response to Farmer and Keane’s braying. The socialisation of the cost is something we all need to deal with - Government through thoughtful responses, and us through a consideration of our alcohol use.
The figures quoted for 12 to 17 year old binge drinking are horrific if corect, but they are not legally entitled to drink period. How about tackling the suppliers,be they parents or publicans?
If ‘patterns of drinking’ are the most important consideration, then why the proposals for fewer bars? Surely a proliferation of smaller bars would be more conducive to healthy drinking patterns than concentrating people in endless beer barns?
Journalist, reporter doesn’t = philosopher although report with opinion explored is more interesting than blank reporting. Complex patient eclectic ploughing of the soil is needed for the seeds of philosophy to yield valuable & handsome product. Left =0
In my experience Farmer has been around for forty years at least and has yet to make a sober judgement. Both he & Keane are characterised in the last paragraph - possibly as shareholders but that is not the only characterisation that befits - work it out.
Thank you Geoff Munro for this article. Hope this is a lesson to Richard and Bernard who stand to ruin the reputation of Crikey which I turn to because of the low quality of so many other media agencies.
On a very human level it’s easy to be in denial at the cunning effect of alcohol on one’s health and well being, mood, IQ. An ABC show called it “the great deceiver”. Basically alcoholic is crap, not least depressed Irish after the Famine woes.
to WENDY: Yes; 2 YEARS low level (2 beers) regular exposure in early teens maketh an ALCOHOLIC = to adult heavy drinking exposure for 20 years. The young brain is severely damaged by binge drinking but unoticed (such is the brain) till specially tested
This article neatly encapsulates the problems alcohol and alcohol companies can cause. It also highlights the inadequacies of the left-libertarian response to an alcoholic culture that glorifies bingeing and normalises the damage to brains and bodies.