Something
Emporium

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
- Raymond Chandler

So, ALAC. ALAC are the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand, established in 1976 to "encourage responsible use and minimise misuse [of alcohol]". They are funded out of a (albeit slight) tax on alcohol purchases.

My problem with ALAC is that they seem to have stepped past the bounds of these original constraints – rather than "encouraging responsible use" they seem to be simply discouraging use. They are, in my opinion, an organisation that takes its roots from the temperance movement – modern day wowsers. I because that definition ('overdeveloped sense of morality') because I feel that a very particular "almost religious" morality is exactly what ALAC espouses. I've been reading a lot of their policy over the last couple of days. A lot of it is contradictory. Take for example, these passages which occur only sentences apart in their position on the use and purchase of alcohol by young people:

There has been concern expressed by parents, agencies and the community, that the lowering of the minimum age at which alcohol can be purchased has ... made binge drinking easier.

However,

[T]here is research that confirms younger drinkers consume in the same way adult New Zealanders do.

Why are the anonymous 'agencies' and the voiceless 'community' concerned? Well, because they're drinking the same way we are, dammit! Other parts of their policy are simply incorrect:

...there has been an increasing trend towards binge drinking for some time in this country.

Now, let's examine this one. In 1847, 1 in every 8 Aucklanders had a criminal conviction for drunkenness. That's a huge percentage, and it must be remembered that drunkenness in 1847 was considerably more consumption than the 3 standard drinks per day prescribed by ALAC. In 1861 there were 6 seperate breweries in Canterbury, serving only 15,000 settlers. In addition to this each of these 15,000 drank an annual total of 3 gallons of imported spirits, 7 of imported beer and 2 of wine. By comparision, the annual per capita consumption 1988 was 0.4 gallons of spirits, 24.5 gallons of beer and 1 of wine. The more complicated statistics for modern consumption, when converted, work out to around 0.6 gallons of spirits (and fortified wine), 19 gallons of beer (and equivalent RTDs) and 4.5 gallons of wine.

Let's do some mathematical analysis of this one:

• A 'standard drink' is 12.7mL of alcohol - about 35mL of spirits, 250mL of beer and 100mL of wine according to ALACs own figures.
• An imperial gallon is 4546mL

• 1847: 763 standard drinks per year, plus whatever they could make themselves
• 1988: 563 standard drinks per year
• 2004: 659 standard drinks per year

Now, according to these figures, the average person would pretty much have to drink two drinks a day, day after day to avoid 'binging'. Given that in 1995 it was established that the median frequency of drinking was about once every two to three days we can arrive at the conclusion that the majority of people are dirty filty stinking binge drinkers according to ALAC's figures. The quick will see that I've actually assumed the average consumption is fairly close to the median, but I hold that to be true. Here's a more accurate statement of the situation from Stats NZ:

"The total volume of alcoholic beverages available for consumption decreased over the 1990–2000 period by 3 percent to 418.5 million litres in the year ending June 2000. However, the total volume of absolute alcohol available for consumption increased by 1 percent, to 26.3 million litres, during this 10-year period."

So, how is it again that we should be worried when drinking has increased by only a single percent in the last ten years, and has decreased a sizeable amount in the last hundred? Ok, so, overall my point is that New Zealand has always had a history of drinking, and I don't think it's anything much to be worried about. And just as New Zealand has always had a history of drinking, we've had a history of people and organisations who have, for their own questions of morality, frowned upon it. Captain Thomas MacDonnell became our second British Resident in 1835 and promptly set up an association to forbid the sale of liquor. Needless to say, it was a rediculously useless gesture at a time before New Zealand was even a country.

In the end no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society, and we shouldn't pretend it does.