Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I would have to whole heartedly agree with Joanna on this one: it’s a definite media beat up. Regardless, I also think the government is using this as an opportunity to inflate already exorbitant alcohol taxes.

I know I have read somewhere that the Australian government gets a very large percentage of their revenue from alcohol taxes, cigarette taxes and gaming machines.

In inflating the prices on alcopops it seems to me that the government has been very smart. Alcopops, when compared with wine and beer, represent a small percentage of the alcohol market. Furthermore, the major customers for this type of alcohol (teenagers) really have little, or no, real purchasing power (in this market). They also have little opportunity to argue against the price increase, and are likely to be ignored if they do. Coupled with the government and medias arguments – “it’s for their own good” – it seems to me that the government has found a dream combination. That is, a way to raise a tax, completely justify it, and not really have to worry about too much of a backlash.

The fact is, teenagers drink, and will always drink. It is also a fact that, when the time comes, most mature and grow up.

I also think that when it comes to drugs and alcohol, education is the most important thing. And to me the responsibility for education should definitely involve parents at home, and parents at home teaching their kids the right way to drink – and sometimes letting their kids make the mistake of drinking too much.

Maybe a law like the one mentioned is good to remind parents of their responsibility, but I largely think this is what the issue of binge-drinking should come down to: the parents’ responsibility.

I love the ad on TV at the moment about 'Children see, Children do', very powerful.

So as adults, think about our past and how we were influenced early on in life. Regardless of alcohol, drugs or physical abuse we grow up believing we are right and our world is normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZscS775ek8

Alcohol is a drug and should be taken in moderation, like any other drug. Otherwise it will kill you.

;)

Now if only K-Rudd would follow suit and add a karaoke tax. I can see it now:

"Before we'll allow you to, er, sing Miss Egan, you'll have to cough up $10 (everyone knows that 10% of nothing is 10), and then we'll press play on that awful Alanis Morrisette song for the fifth time tonight.''

"Sure thing", I'd respond jovially, "I'll handover the cash just as soon as I remember the PIN to my ATM card".

Crime prevention in the making. Society would be all the better for it.

Yes, I was when I first saw it, Jenny Hume.   However, there is nothing except excellent, religious  sentiment in there, apart from the references to Fornicating under consent of the king.   Whatever happened to the old Fornication and unlawful carnal knowledge explanation of yore?

I like to think of you and the atheist as represented in the last screens, Jenny.  (That's a joke, btw).

In actual fact Hitler did only have one ball: the right one. If he did all that with one ball imagine what he would have done with two.

Now what's all this about binge drinking?

Alcohol is a terrible drug; it should be banned. But since it is not I suppose that it is my duty as a responsible consumer to keep the economy ticking over.

The taxes I paid included in the price of the booze and lunch I consumed today will do wonders for our economy.

The difference between moi and a pisspot is that the pisspot drinks to get drunk. Moi drinks for his nation.

I would suggest all you pisspots do likewise.

Otherwise I have no comment.

Gulp gulp hic gulp buuuurrrrrpppp haaaaaaaaa.

An oldie but a goodie....that would offend some, I have no doubt.

Would he be interested in this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA-pWKRyyG8

Joanna Egan, the guidelines are often absurd....I recall an earnest female medico on the ABC saying that, on very special occasions, a female might have as many as 2 glasses of wine.

...Or maybe it's the wine that is dangerous, and women should stick to spirits:  one recalls the tales of the Queen Mother, and how, reputedly, offered gin or vodka, would gaily accept both and ask for doubles of each. 

Why don't they teach people to eat/snack while drinking, which counteracts many of its bad effects?

Because they don't really care, is my opinion.

I have to agree with Joanna that the topic 'youth binge-drinking' is kind of blown up by the media. There was the same discussion some months ago in Germany, where I'm from. 

There it is really easy for teenagers to get alcohol, because the law is not as strict as in Australia and the fines for contravention aren't that high. Therefore, I think, Australia deals very strict with alcohol abuse. Everybody who sells alcohol has to have a RSA and everybody buying alcohol has to show an ID.

The conclusion of the public discussion in Germany was, that clubs weren't allowed to do 1-Euro-a-shot parties anymore. Anyway, this doesn't keep teenagers from drinking. Neither will higher fines or more laws. 

Alcohol is not only an accepted drug in our society, but a social drug and can therefore not being banned. I don't say that it is good to drink alcohol, but most people do and the majority of them are not alcoholics. 

The most effective way to avoid alcohol abuse is to teach young people a responsible handling with alcohol. Measures like doing the RSA already at high school would be a beginning. Whereas rising fines, in my opinion is not the most successful way! 

I think the whole issue of youth binge-drinking and binge-drinking in general is a bit of a media beat-up. I have read the statistics, and I think they're inaccurate largely because the recommended dosage of alcohol per day is highly unrealistic.

Most of my friends drink, most only socially. However, I have never felt any pressure to drink, and I have plenty of friends who only drink occasionally, and some who don't drink at all. Although those of us who do drink occasionally 'drink too much', I would categorically say that not one of my friends is a 'problem drinker'. 

As for the 'alco-pop tax', I think it is ridiculous. I don't know anyone who drinks them anyway, and if they did, they would just buy whole bottles of spirits instead. Isn't that more dangerous? At least 'alco-pops' are measured and poured, and you know exactly how many standard drinks you're consuming. And since when are they called 'alco-pops' anyway? I've always known them as RTD's (Ready To Drinks), or pre-mixed drinks.

As for parents buying alcohol for minors, I was curious as to your terminology:  "fines of up to $6000 for recklessly supplying liquor to minors". What does 'recklessly' entail? Is it specifically targetted at parents? Or at adults in general?

In high school, a few of my friends' parents bought us alcohol for parties, their rationale being that they'd rather know what we were drinking, rather than have some seedy 'toolie' type buy it for us. They knew we would get the alcohol one way or another, and this way we wouldn't buy three bottles of vodka each. I can totally empathise with that viewpoint.

This is a topic to warm the cockles of any Aussie heart.  I drink little these days and have sworn of cannabis as well.  I yearn, sometimes but not often, for the tear-ass moment when one simply lets the brakes off completely.  You know, I guess I yearn for the old days when it was possible to to blat along in a decent low revving V8 across the western plains, late at night, say, heading for Coona with a view to dossing down in the Warrambungles with nothing but the stars overhead,  a bottle of Inner Circle Red Spot Rum to keep you warm and some of Doc Hennessy's home grown to keep the thoughts and conversation clear.

Yes indeed, bingeing, or less politely, getting dazzlingly fucked up on a range of alcohol and substances is a deeply entrenched Oz national attribute.

In Melbourne not so long ago with a dear friend and we stayed up late at a bar with a street overlook.  One about six feet above the footpath so we could watch the parade of slobbering drunk yoof reeling up and down the street.  The height advantage allowed us to observe in safety as they were mostly so totally out of it that they couldn't find the entrance door and God forbid actually being on street level with them.  Your average friendly out-of-it nitwit can turn into a raging psycho in a flash with Ice on board these days so some physical barrier is an advantage in this sort of participant observation.

Now, Ice is an ugly drug.  A few years ago, for reasons I won't go into, I was obliged to do hourly Glascow Coma Scale observations on a young bloke who the Police had manacled hand and foot to the bed.  This meant looking into his eyes in order to establish his state of consciousness.  That was an experience I could have done without.  Eyes like piss holes in the snow acting as windows to a state of consciousness hitherto unimagined by me. He had a cast put on his broken forearm while he was unconscious.  He regained consciousness to find that one of the coppers had written the date followed by "Arrested by Robbo" on the inside of his cast.  Imagine three months in remand and looking at that every day.

While in Melbourne it occurred to us that drinking is one thing but it really is quite something  else when apparently an entire nation routinely gets off its scone and this is accepted as normal behaviour.

I think that the vast number of slang terms for being wildly inebriated lets us know that bingeing among the young merely reflects what they have learned from their elders and betters: drink as a skunk and pissed as a parrot are my favourites. 

By the way did you know that parrots do get pissed?  While in Townsville I often had to move a flock of dead drunk parrots from the driveway before leaving in my car.  In summer they would drink the fermented rainwater from inside flower bells and then actually fall out of the tree and lie upside down with their little parroty feet in the air.  Too drunk to move.  Very endearing and indistinguishable from the human population in their attitude to the piss: don't stop 'till you've had enough.

Things are pretty wild in many ways - perhaps wilder than they used to be or ought to be.  I was chatting to a single station copper who works a back country town on the edges of the Hunter Valley.  I know the joint and asked "How are the hillbillies up there treating you?".  He nearly was sobbing as he explained that every second informant tells him that so and so is growing a crop on various ridges around the place but the informant invariably followed this up with a warning as to the dangerousness to his good self of investigation the health and whereabouts of said crop.  He was terrified.  He said he's installed another five movement sensor lights around his cottage and keeps extra cannisters of pepper spray about the place.

There was a time when the good and gentle descendants of Ned Kelly were content with their own moonshine.  And, yes I do mean Ned's family and she lives outside Bowraville. But these days they have augmented their capacity for home entertainment by growing crops of mind numbing weed and they like to try and maintain a kind of chemical balance between the one and the other.  Generally speaking they fail to maintain any sort of balance at all.

How about a new Tourism Australia campaign - "Get slaughtered and feel at home."  This place really is a Red Neck Wonderland and getting hammered is one way to feel at one with the bulk of the population. 

Which reminds me that the red neck's definition of a good friend is not the one who comes and bails you out all of the time but the one who sits in the cell with you saying "Boy, that was fun".

I guess the problem of bingeing is really one of restraint but isn't that why we have desk sergeants?

Cheers