Greg,
In North Queensland we have a huge problem with binge drinking. Our young people mainly however this sometimes goes into middle age and even old age. I don't have solutions, however I do recognise its existance.

Who on earth is Greg trying to defend? Very few would won't to deny the right for people to have a peaceful drink but to deny a problem among our young is plain ignorant. Maybe Tasmania is 25 years behind the rest of the nation but Greg must of been blotto himself if he fails to see the problems of violence and alcohol in every major city and town in Australia (mainland). Talk to the cabbies about how much spew they have to clean up on Friday and Saturday nights and you will realize the problem we have.

Greg,
You make good propositions about the "nanny" state, and the wrong skew on statistics.
Our society will continue to have problems with lack of individual self control while ever there is the belief that "they'll fix it", therefore "it's safe to be just a bit stupid".
Those who draw media attention by their heavy drunkeness and resulting bad behaviour, seem unaware of the importance of the three "R"s:
Respect for your self
Respect for others
Responsibility for your actions

The "nanny" state is powerless to change people's attitiudes - that only comes by personal awareness of a problem then the personal desire to fix it.

Take your blindfold off Greg Barns. I am disappointed if not shocked that you of all people would come up with such a unbalanced view. What ever happened to your values in "Unfinished Business". Surely it is you who could offer the honesty.

As a female, living in Cape York, FNQLD, I congratulate the Federal Health Minister for her stand to raise awareness to curb Australia's culture of drinking.

As a female I have taken quite a battering within this community as I tried to link the awareness about drinking to domestic violence-kids at risk locally, through crime prevention, health and general "civic safety" forums.

The social and economic cost of this culture is having a 'dire' impact on our Australian culture, on families and community breakdown, on our kids and it is not okay!

Drinking as a 'Aussie' culture has gotten out of hand and those who can not be honest about the need to discuss and aim to help curb it's impact on others, are part of the problem.

Greg Barns perhaps you could discuss your underlying worries of governments 'over or under' regulating our sense of freedom in a more constructive way.

No one wants their freedom curbed, but this is an issue of individual trust - self-government and the ways we value of our citizenship. I do not believe it is the bullies who should roughshod our efforts to clean-up social neglectful awareness.... where there is need - to open the depth of sensibility behind this public address.

http://www.miacat.com/
.

There will always be a binge drinking problem with youth until it all clicks with Canberra that the need is for wholesome, fulfilling work/occupation.
The kids lack a solid vision for the future...thats all.
National service would help this problem and establish quite a few in good careers.
I say wake up oz sacrifice and rotten tech where possible...and its advancement to nowhere... and find them manual based jobs.
Tech, reliant on computers and chips, is such a frail event.
It needs to be bagged and thrown away as a major root of so many social problems.

Well said Greg. I was actually going to write something along these lines myself but you did it first and better.

I went to a talk the other day and the speaker mentioned the State's crackdown in the 1850s on street corner larrikins. It sounded much the same as the attack on so called binge drinking by young people. It was all about social control and forcing people into the arms of wage slavery.

I vaugely remember a study which seemed to show that binge drinking was worse in the days of my youth than now (ie in the late 60s and early 70s.) It may have a been a newspaper reference, and so may be lost to my inadequate research skills.

There is one point I will have to disagree with you on however. Alcohol is addictive, much more so than say pure heroin. So there will be alcoholics. Why getting pissed on Saturday night leads to that in a small proportion of people is the question. But attacking young people over their drinking (and imposing a pure revenue raiser in the form of the alcopop tax) won't change the propensity of some to alcoholism. It will however raise an extra $500m in tax.

We live is a society were human relations are reified (ie seen as and expressed as being between things) and the process of production is alienating (ie the products of our labour are expropriated by the owners of capital).

Our reified and alienating society produces conditions conducive to escape through chemical means. This is especially true for those moving from school (perehaps through Univeristy) to the workplace, the site of alienation itself, and those moving into the marketplace, the site of reification. In both cases this is likely to be young adults.

Only a profund change in social relations can remove the external drivers for chemical abuse.

In the meantime, the beat up on binge drinking needs to be exposed for what it is, an attempt at conservative social control.

Great piece Greg. I would another contributing factor here is sexism to. Many people cannot cope with Women drinking, for some reason a drunk Women is some how worst then a drunk Man.

I don't drink myself but also don't think the State should be telling me whether I can or not, or how much I can have.

Apart from the incursions into our freedom, the other aspect of politicians in this mode is that is yet another make-work project.

Once you establish that x or y is no longer socially acceptable and needs to be curbed, the next thing is to set up a department to watch over the implementation of those curbs. And to report every so often, using barely-credible and highly selective statistics, to prove they are having an effect.

It happens all the time, at every level of government. "Someone" decides that there are too many people dying on the roads, and puts together a plan to reduce speed limits on all roads. After spending profligately on study trips to Sweden, the creation and disbanding of numerous committees, massive "educational" advertising campaigns, and endless changes and adjustments to the master plan, they put up a few signs. A year later, they find an obscure statistic somewhere that proves they were right, and then move on to the next project.

Drinking. Obesity. Building regulations. Rules for open spaces and enclosed spaces. Rules for disabled access ramps. Rules for the height of guard rails at public monuments. The list, regrettably, is inexhaustible.

I know that the idea of small government is old-fashioned, and dangerously out of step with the current climate of nanny-state political correctness. But it would be really good if we could somehow stop the incoming tide. Just a little.

Incidentally, I had to laugh. Only a couple of days ago we were told, with great fanfare, that we are officially the fattest nation on earth, having overtaken the USA.

Today we find that we are now second only to Japan in longevity.

Can we now expect a campaign "eat lots, live longer?"

Nicely said Greg.

It's quite simple - if people want to drink to excess, that's their choice. Whether it's a stupid choice or not, is their call.

BInge drinking is a buzz word
we have very real problems with booze

Sure while everyone can have their nightly tipple everything is sweet,
the same can be said for heroin
the problem isnt revealed till the booze runs out [or the heroin]

Violence is mostly alcohol fueled [note much violence occurs when the pub closes[thats drug addicts casting blame ]

The average city hospital gets 35 booze deaths per day, be it from rotted orgons, or accidents in cars , or violence 85 percent of violence and 45 percent of crime has the booze ingrediant

Yet to read govt statisitcs 2400 alone died of booze as a cause of death
[even then via some method of accounting] that allows for the benefit of a few drinks turns even that low lie into a minus 2000 [who didnt die?] yet 19,000 were attributed the cause of death by smoking.

No media is going to question nor report on the matter
as they all love their drink
[how often you seen a current affairs team doing a drinking story that is negative? [its allways got some positive spin to it [read your local news paper every 2 de page is a booze add]

The money spent by the booze industry carefully in the media and politics has kep the plant [cannabis and illegal drugs as the only drug problem], but the death rate from adverse drug reaction to perscribed drugs kills 5 jumbo jets equivellent [in usa alone] each year

We need to get real on drugs [all_drugs] its a personal choice till it injures another ,
till then all drugs need to be taxed at true harm costing

,booze hasnt been paying its way [mariuanna that in qld alone raises 65 million in fines [plus many hours of jail time has taken the blame for too long [yet it cures cancer]

But at least we finally talking about booze [but its more than the binge-drinking ]
thats just an obvious symptom,

ASK why are we needing that drink or smoke?
ASK why is my habit any better than your habit?

According to Greg Barns: "alcohol is not inherently harmful in the way that cigarettes are."

Really? Both substances are poisons. Alcoholic drinks are usually manufactured in some way to ameliorate the poisonous taste and we call these concoctions spirits, wine, beer or alcopops. Tobacco just tastes foul. Nonetheless, both are addictive even though many social drinkers wouldn't dream of calling themselves alcoholics. All alcoholics started off with only a few drinks.

Cigarette smoke of course harms other people (just ask an asthmatic). However, being smashed in the face by an angry drunk is also considered harmful by most people. As for the "Nanny State" argument, give me a good reason why the state shouldn't lay off people's enjoyment of ecstasy. Especially people who only do esctasy in moderation.

You can't get away from the fact that alcohol is a lethal drug and wreaks havoc on addicts and society. Forget binge drinking, why do we need to drink this poison at all?

What appears to have been glossed over is the huge amounts of revenue raised by both alcohol and tobacco for the state, territory and Federal governments. Not to mention the manufacturers, marketers, distributors, advertisers and such.

Freedom of choice, certainly - the health issues...well another matter entirely, aren't we the so called 'Thinking Ape' and supposedly able to discern what is good or bad for us individually? To allow the government to take this away faculty is paving a pathway to social control of great magnitude.

Education, again is the key, but will governments who gain so much from the sales be willing to curtail consumption/useage at the likelihood of less revenue? Do the current monies raised by sales equal the cost to society in regards to its impact or is it simply a rule of diminishing returns already? If so, then perhaps the government needs a mandate to curtail supply of these substances into society.

In the NT we have seen the control measures taken in remote communities fail in the majority, as the abusers of substances - legal or illicit, simply move location and now fill the streets and surrounds of Darwin, Katherine and Tennant Creek, creating a more concentrated problem in these locales. Prohibition simply has not worked, but created problems in another location.

I couldn't have wrote this article better and want to commend the author on a well-expressed, even if slightly flawed (in the eyes of some) article that's overall point is infinitely more important than the nitpicking of some posters here.

Just how Pathetic is this article. Yep the freedom to consume alcohol at any age and at any level reguardless of any threat to ones own personal health and to others and its associated cost to the community is a cause we should take to the streets for. Those poor bastards in Zimbabwe never had it so bad.

To claim that the govt has manufactured the problem to reinstate some form of govt. 'nanny state' social control shows a total lack of any real world experience into the binge drinking culture.

perhaps the real agenda to this whole frivolous article was the final sentence "liberalising of liquor laws has created jobs, investment and created a healthier drinking and social culture" dispite being a load of Bollocks the author displays his true neocon message in that the free market unrestrained or regulated by government will cure all of our social ills. do people really still believe that S$#%. where is this Nirvana U speak of Greg

PGH, putting aside other arguments against the tax, tell me why the alcopops tax should be paid by anyone other than the target? (who were a few teenage girls or some rubbish...) Because as it stands raising the tax because of a few abusers is stealing money from the vast majority of alcopops drinkers.

David JS: "You can't get away from the fact that alcohol is a lethal drug and wreaks havoc on addicts and society. Forget binge drinking, why do we need to drink this poison at all?"

You're way off base on this one David. It has been scientifically proven that drinking in moderation is actually beneficial to your health. Here's one link, but I could quite easily add another dozen.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/546660

Those who enjoy something like a single beer or glass of wine each day tend to live longer on average. Wine actually contains a substance 'res veritrol' (not sure about the spelling) which is the subject of significant research for its surprisingly significant health benefits.

So when you call it poison, I tend to think, no - it's about the quantity. Any given substance becomes a 'poison' when too much is consumed. Even water:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16660273/

"water intoxication."

"Drinking large quantities of water rapidly can throw off the body's balance of electrolytes, causing brain swelling and leading to seizures, coma or even death."

The point of this article, David, is that many people react with kneejerk responses to alleged health crises.
I won't argue that excessive alcohol consumption has a large toll on Australian health, because it does. But to single out all alcohol as being bad is just plain dishonest. I enjoy a beer or two, but I tend not to drink to excess. I'll not be penalised because some idiots imbibe too much.

We're adults. That's what being an adult is all about. Making choices, even if they're stupid ones. Your comments worry me, and I'd hope that view is not widespread.

I get profoundly annoyed at the moralistic tone on both sides of the debates over social problems like binge drinking among the young. There are few criticisms on the role played by entrepreneurs, corporate and otherwise, in our market driven economic system who for instance deliberately target the youth, and other vunerable segements of the population, and create a demand for their wares regardless of the social consequences. The market in its capitalist form knows no ethic but to make money. Until we begin to acknowledge this 'elephant in the room' for what it is, there will be no solution to the corruption and exploitation that essentially derives from this economic system.

Clearly the writer of this does not go out late at night. Or early in the morning. And hasn't been to Kings Cross, Fortitude Valley or any of the other drinking centres in each city.

Call it whatever you like, we have an enormous problem with a dangerous drug, alcohol.

I'm not in favour of any bans as they don't work. The answer is in improving our society and educating parents before they breed and train kiddies to drink through copying behaviour.

What is binge drinking by the way?

It is not 4 beers a day or 2 drinks for a woman.

Binge drinking is where you go out and drink until you either have no money or can't stand up anymore. You can't stand the thought of it again for days and then you do it all again. That's binge drinking.

Mr Barns sounds like he wrote this on the back of a coaster in the front bar of his hangout. Probably dictated by the barman.

I assume though that as there is this huge dilemma that he means ignore it, intellectually of course.

This sort of convoluted thinking drives a man to drink doesn't he?

It'd be interesting to know how many people have only one glass of beer or wine each day. And I also worry about the argument along the lines of "everything is addictive". Smokers argue that "everything can give you cancer". It's simply rationalisation. Say what you like, the human body is not designed to accommodate poison be it alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs. Actually, once tolerance of alcohol sets in (ie: one or two beers doesn't work anymore), people often have a desire to have more and more. As I said, every alcoholic started off with only a few drinks. And anyone can become an alcoholic.

It is true that being an adult means being allowed to make choices including stupid ones. But up to a point. Adults are not allowed to drive beyond the speed limit even when nobody else is on the road. They are not allowed to take ecstasy even if it is only once or twice a year. Why can't people take ecstasy if they want to? Why is the Nanny State interfering with a considered adult choice?

I don't belief alcohol can or should be made illegal overnight. We have seen the appalling effects of prohibition in 1920s America. However, tobacco usage in Australia is falling due to slow strangulation - restrictions on where people may smoke, increased prices and anti-smoking campaigns have played a role. Likewise, a drug like alcohol which is already legal should be slowly strangled and, hopefully, become a weird, anti-social activity like snuff taking or something similar.

If we didn't have any alcohol or drugs, people would still probably spin in circles on their front lawn until they fell over and then we'd have people wanting to make laws against that. Like it or not, it's what people want to do.

DavidJS>"Likewise, a drug like alcohol............"

I can now see the strategy of the authoritarians, socialists already: Label alcohol a Drug and then it becomes part of the Drug War. Well I'm getting sick of this devious agenda. And we all wonder why our politicians are pushing this upon us. There is a large sector of Australians who can't help calling for more bans and even more taxes (eg. freediver) for everything.

"...should be slowly strangled and, hopefully, become a weird, anti-social activity like snuff taking or something similar."

Hopefully being a sappy puritan of any type will soon be recognised as a wierd anti-social acitivity.

'Once you establish that x or y is no longer socially acceptable and needs to be curbed, the next thing is to set up a department to watch over the implementation of those curbs. And to report every so often, using barely-credible and highly selective statistics, to prove they are having an effect.'

Hahaha Pericles. That's gold. Too true.

To my mind, a large element of mankind will always have a desire for drugs of some kind. They are all poison, but they also do have benefits, and can easily be justified on the grounds of living a full life, experiencing everything. Cats eat grass because it will make them spew up a fur ball. Humans get drunk to forget themselves and their predicament for a passage of time.

Some drugs expand the mind too, and those that have not taken them cant possibly understand the benefits of this, or relate to some of the wonderful experiences that can be had.

I have also survived better in natural situations where my mind has been altered (nitrogen narcosis and altitude sickness) from my abilities learned on drugs taking to me to similar states.

If you accept you will never eradicate drugs, or believe like me they are a natural part of life, it would be good to decide on the drug giving the best high, for the least affect on health and the functioning of society.

as bugsy says, 'If we didn't have any alcohol or drugs, people would still probably spin in circles on their front lawn until they fell over and then we'd have people wanting to make laws against that.'

Alcohol probably isn't the best drug we have available, it is better than some, worse than others. We should aim towards a perfect drug, a soma, that the government can dish out to allow the masses to accept their plight and work on for the good of society.

PS: I don't drink binge, so I'm not a binge drinker. For those who have, what does binge taste like?

I'll happily wear the label of puritan if being a puritan means not wanting to be threatened, bashed or murdered by intoxicated people. Or see body organs poison through drug use (yes, isn't alcohol so much fun).

I also note a whiff of hypocrisy in Steel's last response which goes like this - a War on Drugs is not okay when it's a war on my drug.

And it seems nobody can answer this question - why can't people take heroin, crystal meth or ecstasy without the Nanny State coming down on top of them?

DavidJS asks:

"And it seems nobody can answer this question - why can't people take heroin, crystal meth or ecstasy without the Nanny State coming down on top of them?"

Good question. It wasn't till 1951 (from memory) that heroin was made illegal in Australia. I stand to be corrected on that, but it was I think only recently.

I don't see why any drug is illegal. Their abuse (not use necessarily) is a medical problem. It should not be a legal one.

I am not a binge drinker. I am a boozer and have been for 30 years. The liver is fine. Thanks for asking.

Jack Waterford in Saturday's Canberra Times had a good article on the new puritans. He argues this is about social control and the expectation the "state" will fix things up.

The creeping Calvinism of the Rudd Government is a worry, especially when studies show that we are drinking less now than we did in the past. So it may be my generation were bigger bingers than today's young people.

But the anti-binge drinking campaign is not about saving people; it is about raising revenue - the demand for grog is fairly inelastic and may actually go up as economic circumstances worsen) and some sort of social control - keeping young people in their place and making sure they get the capitalist work ethic (ie become wage slaves for capital) quickly. It is also about Rudd labor appealing to a very conservative section of the electorate.

Bring on the Jenkem!

DavidJS, I don't know why you support the War on Drugs. It costs you a fortune in taxes and ends up making people life-long criminals, as once they are tainted by association they have no future (and the prisons begin to fill up). It also forces people to obtain drugs that may have life-threatening mixes and maintains a whole PR front from police who require the funding (your taxes) to keep their jobs and makes people paranoid and aggressive, stealing money from innocent people to fund the insanely high prices

I don't support a War on Drugs or any such political hype (conveniently forgotten once Carlton United promises a lucrative endorsement to the political party of their choice). I simply want alcohol to be recognised as a poisonous substance which affects not only the users but those around them (as does Crystal Meth or heroin) and treated the same way as existing legal but lethal drugs (ie: tobacco).

I am aware that drugs that are already legally available do require different tactics to eradicate them as opposed to illegal substances. So, what can we do?

How about massively lowering the alcohol content of every drink? Which means you can still drink beer but full strength beer won't be around 5%. It'll be around 2%. And force a reduction in the alcohol percentage of wine.

Please don't tell me this is Nanny State stuff because the state already controls the percentage of alcohol in beverages. If it was up to the industry, the alcohol content of each beer or wine bottle would be anyone's guess.

And stop with the 24 hours licenses. Even New York bars are starting close at 2am according to an American friend. I thought it was just a California thing but apparently not.

Finally, at least admit that alcohol is a dangerous drug like marijuana or ecstasy. Sure, it has different effects but then arsenic has different effects to cyanide. Big deal.

Well I agree in part, but cannot agree that there is not a problem with binge drinking. Many parents with teenagers can tell you there is a real problem and not manufactured by some government conspiracy to raise taxes. Raising alcohol taxes is more a convenient spin-off benefit for the government to be able to fund their election promises.

There appears to be a problem on the definition of binge drinking. As another poster put it earlier, my understanding of binge drinking is to obliterate oneself until you can't stand up type of drinking. I would not agree that four drinks per night constitutes binge drinking. Possibly it is the precursor to alcoholism, but it is not binge drinking. Four drinks would have me under the table but I am almost a non-drinker, a woman and a low tolerance to alcohol.

I agree that taxing alcopops is a waste of time - it is not going to solve binge drinking. Teens will just move onto a different drink or will all chip in to buy a bottle of Bundy and a litre of coke.

Why always bandaid solutions? If there is a problem (given that some people think otherwise), what is the cause? The cause might be in the too hard basket and the change involved to really tackle binge drinking would mean a major shift in priorities.

The solution might mean re-evaluation of our obsession with 'the economy'. Something no current government or the alternative will do in any serious way. So expect more emperor's new clothes spin inspired 'solutions' coming our way.

I think most of "the cause" is bad parenting. It doesn't help that the government so often places the responsibility of binge drinkers onto the majority of people who have nothing to do with it (rather than targetting the abusers).