DPF leaks the Law Commission’s review of alcohol laws and policies. My fantasy policy as regards almost all drugs is that they’re legal but heavily taxed to reflect the high external cost of drugs of abuse, so I’d be happy to see the excise increased but not the prescriptive policies around the sale of the drug.
There’s a serious clash of worldviews here: most medical and scientific experts on alcohol regard it as a powerful, dangerous and addictive drug (and seen through this light the Law Commission’s proposals seem very reasonable). But abuse of the drug is very widespread and normalised in our society and the general public isn’t going to appreciate being treated like addicts – even though a huge proportion of the population is exactly that. When it comes to alcohol there’s a cognitive dissonance that kicks in preventing people from regarding themselves as addicts because of the legal status of the drug – so someone might be enthusiastic about the imprisonment of cannabis users but totally opposed to any attempt to regulate their own drug of abuse (DPF calls the proposals ‘the worse kind of nanny state’ – a 10:30 PM sales curfew being worse, apparently, than throwing people in prison for years). The Law Commission’s proposals challenge the delusions and double standards around the drug laws, hence the inevitable outrage.
true, innit?
i gave up ethanol because it faffs with my heart medication, and have since been able to watch the nation behave pissed for a good couple of years or so.
not too much different to what i saw hanging out with stoners and other heavy drug abusers – bad behaviour, cognitive dissonance on their ability to control their habits.
sure do miss a nice single malt though.
Comment by Che Tibby — April 22, 2010 @ 12:52 pm
I wonder if societal views on alcohol have become more or less permissive over time. There has certainly been some change around combining alcohol and some other activities, e.g. drink driving is no longer socially acceptable for many.
Comment by Julie — April 22, 2010 @ 1:02 pm
Not the coffee, I kell you ‘you touch my coffee.
Comment by Clunking Fist — April 22, 2010 @ 1:02 pm
60 Minutes actually did some real journalism last night – looked at the upcoming spat over the Law Cmsn report. Interviewed a doctor consultant to the alcohol industry* and a doctor who worked in emergency medicine who is sick of drunks taking up resources. And then they put the Minister, Peter Dunne, on the spot. He came across as a right weasel.
*thought they could have explored his ideas more though – either he has sold out, or his position is too nuanced for TV journlaism. It was hard to tell.
Comment by MollyByGolly — April 22, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
the Minister, Peter Dunne
Oh. I was wondering if this might lead to some action. Never mind then.
Comment by lyndon — April 22, 2010 @ 1:18 pm
Peter Dunne [...] came across as a right weasel
His is, and always has been, a right weasel.
Comment by progger — April 22, 2010 @ 1:34 pm
Portugal made all drugs (for users) legal in 2001 and a review 5 years on reckoned it worked very well. Traffickers get slammed still, but users get help. This would make their handling of alcohol addiction and other addiction more consistent than ours.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if we did that, and then said all drugs have to be consumed on licenced premises (ethanol, tobacco, heroin) which had sensibly restricted hours. Ah, but you’d never regulate wine or beer ‘cos we can make it at home if we want (and I do). Still, that would cover the high-end ethanol consumption. I know some people drink gallons of beer at a time but I’m hoping the worst drunks do it with something harder. With some ingenuity you can make your own still, but I doubt many of us would. Some would sell bootleg but that would be illegal, of course. Just dreaming.
Comment by Roger Parkinson — April 22, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
If that is Palmer’s report it should scarcely be a surprise; They are the recommendations of an out of touch old man from another country.
Having said that, I strongly support the restriction of wholesaling liquor. In fact, I would remove liquor from supermarkets altogether, there are no good reason for liquor to be sold in supermarkets beyond the profits of liquor companies. Based on my experience in the liquor trade alcohol consumption, especially in the young, is very price dependent. When people run out of money they go home. Allowing people to stagger out of a bar almost broke and blind drunk and then still be able to spend their last $25 on a dozen on the way home at 11pm (or 2am) is just the height of social madness.
I do not believe however that anyone has the right to set blanket closing times. My observations tell me that most people have a maximum drinking window of between 6-8 hours. Clubbers like to go out at midnight and stay out till 6 or 7am. Office Workers on a Friday will have a skinful and be on the train home by 11pm. Others might meet in town at 8pm and carry on until 3 or 4am. Diners might book for 7pm and be home at 1am. Everyone chooses the type of night they want and select what clubs, bars, restaurants or pubs they will go to accordingly.
I can never understand why closing times should even be an issue for central government. Thoughtful planning – for example in Auckland, staggered closing of bars in the Viaduct/Princes Wharf area starting from 2am and going until 4am and creating a “nightclub zone” on (for example) K’rd where trading until 7am is allowed, would largely deal with excessively inebriated drinkers, since generally speaking when a bar shuts the drunk tend to go home, not move on.
Comment by Sanctuary — April 22, 2010 @ 3:11 pm
A center-right weasel surely?
Comment by chiz — April 22, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
@ Sanctuary – That would certainly be the case if it was done as you describe because not many people can be arsed walking from the viaduct all the way up to K’Rd at 3am when they’ve lost half of their mates and have a skin-full.
I would really love to know if the current problems we are facing due to alcohol consumption coincide with the prevalence of RTDs. When I was a drunk student I couldn’t afford top shelf so it was beer or nothing and after a while you do build up a bit of a tolerance (even a lightweight like me) to the point that I got sick of drinking before I got too hammered (for the most part).
Now any body can get their hands on some of those pretty potent bourbon and cola four can packs and get utterly shit-faced within the hour and it is much cheaper then buy a dozen beers
Comment by Exclamation Mark — April 22, 2010 @ 3:51 pm
F*ck, I could murder a cold beer.
Comment by xpat — April 22, 2010 @ 4:06 pm
i gave up ethanol because it faffs with my heart medication, ….
sure do miss a nice single malt though.
OK.
That does it.
I am **definitely** going to start taking my doctor’s warnings more seriously.
Comment by Rob Hosking — April 22, 2010 @ 4:27 pm
International law enforcement has all but stomped out e. The gangs are very pleased as P is much more profitable.
Comment by Neil — April 22, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
Damn – there was meant to be quote marks around “I gave up…single malt though”
Comment by Rob Hosking — April 22, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
I don’t think RTD’s are to blame. When I was a student we used to polish off strong liquor at a vast rate. RTD’s are just a cynical direct pitch to youthful drinkers from a liquor industry that crossed it heart and hoped to die that it would be responsible when the drinking age was lowered. They weren’t; and instead of punitive regulation spineless governments of all colours, blinkered by simplistic market dogma and terrified of the power of the beer barons, let them get away with it.
The lowering of the drinking age was accompanied by an appalling abrogation of responsibility by government, community and business. In principle it was – and is – a good idea. But a combination of criminal behaviour by the liquor companies and weak governments who preferred the purity of the market to the health of their children meant that our young people were thrown to the predatory wolves of the liquor trade, and then blamed by the architects of the disaster for the entirely predictable youth binge drinking culture that followed. Basically, our young people have been preyed on and exploited by those older leaders who should have protected them. And with ANZAC day approaching, I suppose you can only say we have we heard that before? Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Comment by Sanctuary — April 22, 2010 @ 4:33 pm
We must keep our double standards sacrosanct. If the young people of this country get the message that the double standards of this country are negotiable…
Comment by kahikatea — April 22, 2010 @ 5:30 pm
Hey you National supporters… How that change feeling? Pleased you got rid of the nanny state?
Comment by Sanctuary — April 22, 2010 @ 6:04 pm
“Thoughtful planning – for example in Auckland”
I think I spot a flaw.
Comment by Jake — April 22, 2010 @ 7:07 pm
Alcohol is interesting. I was just thinking the other day about how inconsistent my own personal beliefs with regard to alcohol and marijuana use are. Do you that think maybe, given the vast change they have achieved in peoples’ attitudes to smoking over a period of 60 years, the health lobby will someday change peoples’ attitudes to in the same way?
Perhaps in 2060 (assuming civil society hasn’t collapsed due to the failure of most our vital ecosystems)it will have become illegal to drink alcohol in pubs? And drinkers will have to go and stand outside in the cold and huddle miserably on the door step, knocking back vodka shots, before coming back in?>
Comment by LucyJH — April 22, 2010 @ 7:28 pm
Allowing people to stagger out of a bar… …and then still be able to spend their last $25 on a dozen on the way home
You still had money in you pocket when you left the bar? You’re not doin’ it right.
if the current problems we are facing due to alcohol consumption coincide with the prevalence of RTDs… …pretty potent bourbon and cola four can packs
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an RTD top 10%, and a four-pack of them costs approx the same as a supermarket vino. Most red’s are north of 13%. Unless you can convince me that middle class dinner parties have just started becoming hot-beds of drunken debauchery (Danyl’s parties obviously excluded – we’ve all heard the rumours and are awaiting invite) I don’t think the argument holds much chop.
Comment by Phil — April 22, 2010 @ 7:28 pm
“And drinkers will have to go and stand outside in the cold and huddle miserably on the door step, knocking back vodka shots, before coming back in?”
sounds a lot like a school ball.
and hardened drinking has been around as long as i can remember. the only real difference is intolerance to drinking and high-speed automobiles.
Comment by Che Tibby — April 22, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Try Melbun where there’s a fairly large subset of addicts whose idea of a good time necessarily involves violence but they’ve learned that random violence against passers-by is much easier to get away with. Can’t wait for that one to get to NZ.
Personally I’m a big fan of taxation at a level to cover the indirect costs and any other externalities. Not limited to drugs, obviously, but drugs would be a good idea too. Is there any reason not to put a tax on illegal drugs? I mean, the IRD already has provisions for declaring and paying tax on illegal income, so extending that to illegal drugs would have two benefits: more tax income and yet another nasty thing to do to drug dealers who get caught. The SST would be proud!
The time limits on selling alcohol are a good idea, IMO. Although I’d like to see sales shifted from supermarkets to banks for the obvious reason.
Comment by moz — April 22, 2010 @ 7:55 pm
“and hardened drinking has been around as long as i can remember. the only real difference is intolerance to drinking and high-speed automobiles.”
The biggest difference is who’s doing it. It used to just be pakeha men. Now its maori and pakeha, men and women.
Comment by kahikatea — April 22, 2010 @ 8:14 pm
@19
Phil, I’m revealing my West Auckland roots here but FYI you can get a four pack of Cody’s 12% 250ml cans (A bourbon and cola mixture) for $12. This will have the same amount of alcohol as about 9 standard beers (@4% abv).
Your 13% red on the other hand will be equivalent to drinking about 7 beers.
7 beers, or 1 bottle of red (even if it’s Penfolds Grange) isn’t as easy to chop as that sweet cola and alcohol concoction…
Comment by nfpsheppard — April 22, 2010 @ 8:18 pm
I disagree with most increased restrictions on alcohol – this is for similar reasons that I believe most currently banned drugs should be legal – people have a right to decide what to do until they harm others.
Bars full of dicks (like many of the ones in Courtenay Place) will still be full of dicks no matter what time they close. Peak hour for drunks, from my observations, is around midnight. People like that start drinking at 6 and carry on until they run out of money or collapse unconscious. By 4am, it’s mostly fairly sober (at least in alcohol terms) clubbers around.
Limiting off sales won’t stop people getting pissed if they have the forethought to stock up. Increasing prices won’t stop alcoholics, it’ll just make them poorer. And banning dairies from selling booze will just help the big liquor chains (conveniently owned by wealthy national supporters). I see it as just a bit racist to say that Shalimar can’t sell booze and Liquorland (owned by multinational DB Breweries) can.
The only thing that would cut down on the pissed idiots in Wellington would be if an earthquake took Hutt Rd out, really.
Comment by Rich — April 22, 2010 @ 8:30 pm
Rich.
Having found the solution for Wellington, whatis your solution for the rest of the country?
Comment by peterlepaysan — April 22, 2010 @ 9:50 pm
I would like to see earlier closing in my neck of the woods. It would save those who work at the grower’s market at 6:00am on a Saturday getting attacked by inebriated little shits looking for someone to attack. On the other hand, why doesn’t the local council get on top of it? It surely doesn’t need central government regulation.
Comment by yb tnemmoC — April 22, 2010 @ 10:05 pm
i gave up ethanol because it faffs with my heart medication, and have since been able to watch the nation behave pissed for a good couple of years or so.
not too much different to what i saw hanging out with stoners and other heavy drug abusers – bad behaviour, cognitive dissonance on their ability to control their habits.
I (mostly) stopped drinking after my mysterious post-India illness: two glasses of wine now give me a vicious hangover.
Once you regard booze as a powerful drug that just happens to be legal it becomes a bit chilling to observe the way so many people constantly talk about it – it is identical to the way stoners and junkies obsess about their own vices.
Comment by danylmc — April 23, 2010 @ 7:22 am
@ Phil – nfpsheppard beat me to it. What he said is exactly what I am talking about – a walk around the streets and parks and car parks on Sunday morning shows what people have been drinking and it ain’t empty merlot bottles you’ll see lying around. Codys etc seem specifically designed to get you shit faced ASAP and that shit is far more drinkable to young people than bottle of vino. Way easier to scull out of a can than a wine bottle too.
At a younger age teenagers have legal (and illegal) access to cheaper, more potent booze. The booze is more readily available than ever before – don’t need that fake ID at the dodgy superette down the road eh? Couple this with the cheaper and more powerful cars they can buy on easy credit – was this ever going to work out well? We have made it way too easy for kids to fuck their lives up.
Comment by Exclamation Mark — April 23, 2010 @ 8:21 am
[...] This brings me to the idea of “addiction”. What is addiction, and why are we so scared of it. Looking at a search of TVHE, I can tell that the authors here are not scared of addiction, we view it a little differently to the black and white box often given by (say) health professionals (ht Dim Post). [...]
Pingback by TVHE » And a side note on addiction — April 23, 2010 @ 9:44 am
Once you regard booze as a powerful drug that just happens to be legal it becomes a bit chilling to observe the way so many people constantly talk about it – it is identical to the way stoners and junkies obsess about their own vices.
My personal view is all drugs should be legal, because to my observation the behavioural method of ingestion is the most powerful addictive aspect of any narcotic. By way of illustration, it is commonly agreed meth is highly addictive, as are cigarettes – and crack cocaine. What do they have in common? They are smoked (as is pot, a drug i think is much more addicitive than it’s users would have us believe). Therefore the taking of these drugs involves habitual ritualised behaviour (with meth there is, initially at least, a highly socialised ritual in smoking the stuff) and smoking gives an instant hit that rapidly dissipates. Anyone familiar with pokie machines, or a skinner box, understand the addictive implications of this sort of ingestion method. Same for heroin, injected with solemn ritual and giving a near instant hit.
By contract, snorting coke from a straw or popping a pill or having a drink or two – basically slow absorption via the stomach (most snorted drugs end up getting swallowed in mucus) – are much less addictive behaviourally (it’s a pain in the ass trying to avoid the bouncer & sneak into the loos with your g/f to do a line of coke) and it the way the drug impacts on your body. I’ve never met anyone with a bad pill problem; Plenty with a smoking issue of some sort. I believe most people instinctively understand these differences, which is why we prefer our legalised drugs to be in the form of a liquid – and why I think that if we should ever legalise pot THC would quickly be bottled and sold in a drink.
So I don’t agree that booze is a drug that just happens to be legal. I am of the view most of us instinctively understand what is more or less addictive behaviourally and act accordingly, and drinking as a method of ingestion is much less dangerous that smoking. All drugs are, in their way, dangerous. But by legalising them and removing much of the ritualised behaviour around them you also remove a powerful addictive component of their use.
Comment by Sanctuary — April 23, 2010 @ 1:00 pm
“In fact, I would remove liquor from supermarkets altogether,”
Err, they sell beer and wine, merely a feeble subset of liquor, Sanctimonious.
Moz says “Personally I’m a big fan of taxation at a level to cover the indirect costs and any other externalities.”
So why don’t we tax knifes heavily? Rather than go to the bother of trying killers?
So don’t we just torch the forest? Rather than expend all that labour on trapping possums?
Why don’t we just ban cars?
“Once you regard rugby as a sport that just happens to be professional it becomes a bit chilling to observe the way so many people constantly talk about it – it is identical to the way football and basketball fans obsess about their own sports.”
I’m not sure your thinking makes sense Danyl. People talk about all sorts of subjects, cars, triple-bypasses, corrupt footballers, the iPad. Why can’t we talk about booze? Only a few of us are addicts, just as only a few of us are Apple bores. So why punish all alcohol consumers, all Apple owners, for the sins of a few? Why not try something different and new, like:
– having a decent police presence in the wee small hours
– arresting drunks
Comment by Clunking Fist — April 23, 2010 @ 2:46 pm
Well Clunking Fist, the Police don’t bother to enforce the laws we have because they know the judiciary won’t do anything, will probably throw the case out, or just slap the person with a wet bus ticket.
Instead we need new laws to keep the politicians, the judiciary, and their mates in the Law Commission nice and comfortable on their gravy trains.
And then when those laws don’t work, we’ll need amendments.
Rinse and repeat as many times as you like!
Comment by R Singers — April 23, 2010 @ 4:21 pm
pot, a drug i think is much more addicitive than it’s users would have us believe
I would say they’re about right, usually.
Nutt et al. compared dependence characteristics of 20 drugs in Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse (The Lancet 369, 2007, pp. 1047-1053). In the ‘physical dependence’ category (exactly what it sounds like: ability of the drug to create a chemical addiction), cannabis received a score of 0.8 out of 3.0. Alcohol scored 1.6, tobacco 1.8, heroin 3.0, ketamine 1.0.
Comment by derp de derp — April 23, 2010 @ 6:55 pm