Should we not drive because people die on the road.
Stay away from the sea,people drown.
Keep out of the bush snakes live there.
For every problem drinker a few just have a couple.
Some gamble just for fun,I win some times not others but never lost a cent I could not afford to.
Humans are not looking for more regimentation, more rules imposed.
The current view poker machines are evil may well be true but what gun forces fools to be fools.
Every punter understands wins are just others losses you can not beat the machines.

There is nothing wrong with either alcohol or gambling, if they are used in moderation.

People are the problem.

One way the limit the use of alcohol would be to impose a heafty tax on 'bulk purchases', rather than the current system, whereby buying in bulk usually results in 'discounted' prices.

Rather than selling beers by the slab, sell them in 'four packs' and, if one chooses to buy more than one 'four pack', then be ready to fork out some serious 'cash for tax'.

As for gambling, one the the independants has raised the issue of 'excessive gambling' and has stated that it is currently possible for an individual to loose as much as $15,000 per hour in a single poker machine. If this is correct, it's insaine!

Of cause if you reduce this amount, you must also reduce the winnings.

Won't worry me as I don't gamble. Not becuase I'm a 'prude', simply because I don't get a kick out of it.

Revenue V risk.
As always, if you slash the revenue stream from anything, you must then find the revenue from something else and, I don't know any government revenue stream that's making a killing at this point, other than these two and cigs.

So there in lies your problem.

The primary question asked must bring the answer of yes. The problem is that we will not give up alcohol and gambling willingly. Even cigarets have proven very hard to budge and they are condemned almost unanimously.
Our freedom to indulge in these things is a fairly concrete part of freedom, our freedom has been slowly eaten away over the past 30 years and we don't seem to notice it.
If you want better control over sales then introduce heavy restrictions on where and when alcohol and gambling can be sold or take place. Require people to have a card like an eftpos card that will only allow them to purchase a limited amount of alcohol or gambling credits in any 24 hour period.
This will not stop home brewing or the good old card night but these are not the issue at hand. We need to stop blaming things like alcohol, gambling and drugs for problems in our societies and face up to the real problems that these people have. Most drug addicts are so because of other things that have happened in their lives, this is what we need to tackle.
Prohibition does not work this is clearly proven, so why do we persist with it?

Nope. It doesn't work like that, nairbe.

>>The primary question asked must bring the answer of yes<<

The "primary question" isn't really a question at all.

grateful asks if we "willingly" gave up alcohol and gambling, would we be better off.

What grateful has done is highly manipulative, in that he comprehensively attributes the virtues of "low health costs, less violence, crime, domestic violence etc.", to universal abstinence.

He fails to put the other side of the story, that the vast majority of drinkers and gamblers are healthy, law abiding folk, who don't beat up on their wives.

Getting that section of the community to "voluntarily" eschew their beer and bob-on-the-nags is not going to contribute one iota to a better society.

Apart from the fact that it is a heavily loaded question, it could not possibly occur. If it were possible - i.e., every individual independently chooses neither to drink nor to gamble - it would already have happened. The fact that they haven't, indicates that some form of coercion would be necessary.

So, sorry mate, I'm not buying into what is effectively a sermon, not a question for realistic debate.

Dear grateful

"If Australians willingly gave up alcohol (and other drugs) and gambling then society as a whole, along with these individuals, would be better off."

The superficial answer would have to be yes. The real answer is in the scheme of how things really are, is no.

To start with, drugs and alcohol do not belong to any of us as individual problems. Sure people make lifestyle choices and must take responsibility for these. But who paints the ideas about what alcohol is to us in our society. What is McDonalds? what is smoking? What do these lifestyle choices represent to us in our picture of what we want to choose from the smorgasboard of temptations. Big business and the media send us these pictures. They don't tell us what to think, but they do provide us with the pictures that influence they way we see lifestyle choices within our culture.

I doubt if people would want to willingingly give us the things that make them feel relaxed, more confident, give them a bit of a thrill to their otherwise perhaps dull lives, make them feel like they can afford to take the family out to dinner when they really could not otherwise do so.

The problem is not the vices, the problem is not the people who use them, the problem is that things like alcohol and gambling offer the hope of comfort. The keepers of the problem are those in big business and the media who capitalise on human vulnerabilities. In an ideal world we would all be calm and confident, but life just is not like that for everyone.

Society would be much better off if the sly, unrelenting agents of fundamentalist religion gave up their sneaky attempts to control others and went and went an had a beer too.

It is little by little that we lose our freedom. If there is not a loud outcry and strong action to prevent the little losses, soon we have lost the very foundations on which we stand.

Don't take our cooperation and willingness to accept individual differences as signs of weakness in our democracy for they are actually strengths.