At the risk of being shouted down, I think Rob Moodie has a valid point in worrying about the levels of binge-drinking.

My basic premise is that most health problems are better prevented than cured, both in terms of their health effects, the pain and suffering often implicit in treatment and the costs associated with doing so.

Pub owners aren't that cool about binge-drinking (in its worst incarnations) either...the damage done to a pub's reputation when its patrons are violent and abusive, and the property damage that can be wrought by people "taking it a bit too far" can have lasting effects on the livelihood of people in the hospitality industry too (not to mention danger to staff members who have to refuse to serve people on the basis they've had more than enough to drink).

I know some post-ers have been concerned about the price of alcohol going up or that this is in some way an overly authoritarian idea, but this is the bit I'm interested in, regarding the NT experience:

"More than 100 lives were saved, more than 2,100 hospital admissions were avoided and $124 million in health-care costs and lost productivity were saved."

Surely that's good news? Or not?

Also a disclosure: I don't know and have never met Rob Moodie. And I like a drink as well as the next person. I just don't think that considering the end-product of binge-drinking (or smoking, or having unprotected sex or driving while on cocaine, or any one of a number of things people routinely do) is inappropriate or a waste of time/space/column inches/kilobytes.

As Homer Simpson said "Alcohol - the reason for, and the solution to - most of society's problems".

I have yet to hear of somebody smoking a half dozen Winfields and then going home to beat their wife or getting behind the wheel and killing somebody.

Lots of talk about passive smoking but nothing about the effects of passive drinking.

"Those who accuse the writer of promoting a nanny state would be the first to expect the state to nanny them and pick up the tab for the cost of excessive drinking e.g. road crashes, liver damage etc."

No, I wouldn't.

Car crashes? Fine. Alcohol locks on every car. Massive police blitzes every weekend. Ban pubs from having car parks and force people onto public transport. Long sentences for any alcohol-aggravated road death.

Liver damage? There are tests that can see if a person is a heavy drinker. Move those people to the back of the queue for any sort of treatment.

If people want to abuse alcohol, make sure they face consequences, then get out of their way.

The article is NOT about encouraging individual responsibility for actions. It is about finding ways to control people's behaviour for them, by someone who thinks he knows better. Oh, and patronising us by saying things like:

"Less alcohol, but more fun".

Mine's a pint.

We live in a society where individual rights and freedoms are guarded dearly (see some of the above posts), but where there is not equivalent attention given to responsibilities. I think that banning alcohol is futile, and there is a good example of that futility in the US in the 1920s.

OK, so what should you do if you are concerned about the consequences of alcohol abuse? The tax on tobacco is now high enough, I am told, that it works out over time equal to the average medical and hospital costs of the average dying lung cancer patient. I am also told that it is harder to set a value on the costs of alcohol-caused medical treatments, but I see no good reason for not setting the taxes on alcohol to a level that would probably cover such costs. Of course, that means that those of us who drink sensibly would be subsidising the medical costs of the less sensible — but then that would still be true were there no taxes on alcohol at all.

My own suggestion is that people who like to drink, and believe that they do so in a benign way, educate their children to do the same, by introducing them to wine with meals, explaining as they go why we like alcohol, and how we have to master it, and not let it master us.

But alcohol is good for you.

better treatment of autoimmune disease
Toni Baker
Aug. 4, 2006

A signaling molecule with an affinity for alcohol has yielded a
rapid, inexpensive way to make large numbers of immune cells that
work like beat cops to keep misguided cells from attacking the body.

The ability to easily make large numbers of these cells opens the
door to improved treatment and a better understanding of autoimmune
diseases such as type1 diabetes and arthritis, Medical College of
Georgia researchers say.

T cells are components of the immune system designed to attack
invaders such as bacteria and viruses; regulatory T cells are a small
subset that prevents the cells from also attacking body tissue.

Research published in the August issue of Nature Methods shows that,
given the option, phospholipase D, which typically mixes with water,
prefers alcohol. It's an apparently lethal choice for the signaling
molecule that, in turn, also kills T cells that need phospholipase D
to survive. Previously, it was unknown whether regulatory T cells
required the molecule.

"What we have found is that if you block this enzyme, almost all T
cells die after three days but the regulatory T cells can survive,"
says Dr. Makio Iwashima, MCG immunologist and the study's
corresponding author. "After three days, we give them some food to
grow and, in one week, you get about 90 percent pure regulatory
cells."

The approach worked with laboratory-grade alcohol, called butanol, as well as beverage-grade ethanol.

It isn't just footballers and other sporty types who are exposed in the media as binge drinking morons, we hear quite often of one drunk politician or another groping, abusing or otherwise displaying their genuine hypocritical nature in a late night party-room piss-up.

The retail alcohol industry has been given a free reign as suppliers of Australia's only legal recreational drug.

In which other area of life do we accept such a total monopoly?

Oh, and can we stop protecting me from cannabis at some stage soon?