REMEMBER this name - or if you’re drunk, get a friend to write it on the back of a beer coaster and stick it to your forehead for future reference. It’s going to be important later on.
Not next week. Not in a month’s time. But in a few years, when shouts are banned, shots are illegal, when you are limited, by law, to a maximum of four purchases of spirits, liqueurs and/or fortified beverages within a 24-hour period at any licensed establishment.
When it’s illegal to drink in the presence of minors. Illegal to drink at any sporting event. Illegal to drink at a picnic.
When your bottle of Penfolds has 90 per cent of its label covered with a photograph of a spotty liver, half a brain, a corpse in a car, a person with a glass sticking out of their head and the dramatic warning over the top reading DRINKING CAUSES CIRRHOSIS/BRAIN DAMAGE/CAR ACCIDENTS/RANDOM VIOLENCE and underneath, in 10-point helvetica, the evocative words “Koonunga Hill - product of the Barossa Valley, may contain sulphites, egg white, preservative 220 added. Enjoy in moderation.
Oh yeah, the name.
Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer of the United Kingdom.
The chief medical officer’s annual report, released in London this April, advocates minimum unit pricing for all alcoholic drinks, setting the price at 50p per standard drink. For arguments sake, lets convert 50p to $1.50 in real money that has echidnas on it and say that a 4-litre cask of Coolabah moselle contains 40 standard drinks. Under Sir Liam’s plan, a cask of Coolabah would no longer cost $15. It would cost $60.
It’s enough to make you choke on your Jatz and cabanossi.
The first issue with Sir Liam’s plan is that it suggests a snobbish assumption that poorer people have a monopoly on problem drinking, when there’s plenty of middle-class soaks who pretend they’re drinking bottled wine for the taste.
It also presumes poorer people will stop drinking because it costs more, when there’s evidence they’ve been the most resistant to artificial increases in cigarette pricing and have cut back on decadent items like bread or school books instead.
The most befuddling aspect of Sir Liam’s argument, from a scientific point of view, is he speaks of smoking and drinking as if they are interchangeable, both in terms of health effects on the individual and damage to a community.
The second part of his argument is harder to refute. The first is ridiculous and can be easily dismissed.
In 2009, only the most rabid libertarian would argue that the jury is still out on smoking. The science is in. In all but a minority of cases, you will die sooner than you otherwise should if you don’t get off the darts.
But the science is all over the place when it comes to drink.
Some studies say a little bit is good. Some say a little bit is lethal. Others say moderate daily drinkers face greater risks than bingers, while others argue a daily tipple is much safer than stockpiling your four-for-men-and-two-for-women quota for that barbecue, where you ended up riding a pool pony in the nude, singing Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run.
One of the sneaky things that anti-grog scientists fail to disclose is that, in their examination of the effect of drink, they consider what are known as co-morbidities - that is, when people die from a couple of things. Because problem drinkers also do other dangerous things - smoking, driving, committing suicide - the figures get lumped together and drink gets the blame.
Drink may deserve much of the blame but when the figures are presented out of context the picture is misleading.
None of this washes with Sir Liam. He insists that, when it comes to the individual, drinking is pretty much all downside in health terms.
In terms of its impact on the community, he’s coined a cringeworthy term - passive drinking. He doesn’t mean it like sidestream smoking, where you walk past a crowded bar, take a deep breath and, next thing you know, you’re playing for Manly. He means it in terms of the broader impact drinkers have on unborn babies, victims of assault and drink-driving, absenteeism, cost to the health system.
The term might be cringeworthy but the argument he makes is more compelling than his every-drink-is-doing-you-damage nonsense. The best argument against it is based on fairness.
If we are not careful the slightly tipsy majority who’ve fired up the Singstar and are cacking themselves laughing with friends will end up paying for that small percentage who are glassing each other or driving home with one eye shut.
At the risk of sounding like Charlton Heston, it’s not the alcohol that does the damage but the person who’s drinking it.
That’s not to advocate the status quo. For the good of everybody, more should be done to crack down on people who can’t drink properly.
For starters, a zero blood alcohol limit for drivers would not only make sense, it would make life easier for people who drink a little bit.
Events in Canberra earlier this year did nothing to instill optimism on the part of sensible bingers. Given his family values platform, Senator Stephen Fielding presumably wasn’t plastered when he voted against the alcopops tax - a pity, as it could have excused his odd behaviour. Fielding also wanted alcohol companies banned from sponsoring sport - uncompetitive, nanny-state censorship which would have damaged every code in the land.
Because the Government said no, he blocked the alcopops tax in its entirety, despite the fact that it’s had the welcome result of reducing binge-drinking by kids. Meanwhile, Health Minister Nicola Roxon is considering new drinking guidelines which say you should never, ever have more than four standard drinks in one day.
Now we have new calls from Stephen Fielding for a ban on alcohol advertising of sport. Others in the health lobby want a ban on all alcohol advertising, in keeping with Sir Liam’s theories about the evil that is “passive” drinking.
Back in the UK, while the British Government and Opposition have both rejected Sir Liam’s unit pricing plan, it is under serious consideration in Scotland.
That’s right, the Scots, looking at a way to drink less and pay more. It’s enough to turn you to drink.
- This is an updated version of a column written for The Daily Telegraph in April before The Punch had been launched.
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