Booze culture killing our young

BY ALAN CLARKE

Too many years ago by far, I celebrated the start of the three days of a southern summer and securing the fourth-form school caning record by catching the ferry Wairua to Stewart Island. There, two mates and I each bought a dozen (quart bottles) of DB – not all Southern "men" drank Speights – and, with little else for a bunch of good keen boys to do, proceeded to scull them.

I awoke well after dawn in the middle of the Halfmoon Bay campground, either naked or nearly so – the finer detail would have been uploaded on brain cells destined for destruction in a subsequent session.

It was, as I recall, my second serious binge. My first came at just 12, when I was delivered home drunk in the wee hours by the two older guys I played in a band with.

My point? Simply that binge-drinking by youngsters is nothing new. If anything, there are more kids these days who do actually take heed of the advice that is now drummed into them in schools about the potential pitfalls of the demon alcohol.

However, news this week paints a different, and very worrying, picture.

Kiwis are drinking themselves to death in fast-growing numbers, according to figures from the Coroner's Office – kids like Auckland schoolboy, James Webster, who died in his sleep after downing straight vodka – uncharacteristically, according to his family.

The records show there were just 41 alcohol deaths in 2000, but eight years later, this number was over 250.

Experts like Professor Doug Sellman, director of the National Addiction Centre, link the rise in young drinkers with the lowering of the alcohol purchase age in 1999.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer, chairman of the Law Commission who led an exhaustive and extensive inquiry into New Zealand drinking issues, makes similar noises in the report he presented to Parliament this year.

However, in my own, admittedly, limited, and purely personal experience, an even greater factor than the lowered drinking age is the booze industry's main tool to hook youngsters in early: flooding the kiddie-market with ready-to-drinks (RTDs).

Let's face it, booze has always been available to kids who wanted it. At least once a week during the fifth form, a group of mates and I would wander up to the closest tavern. We would take off our school ties, wander in and buy a jug. Alternatively, we'd get takeouts and down them out the back of a friendly grocer's, all within a few blocks of school. The barmen, the grocer and heaven knows who else knew what we were up to. It was all just part of the prevailing culture.

One difference is that the drink of choice, except for the odd bottle of Cold Duck, Montana Pearl or Nelson Rochdale cider, was beer, not as palatable to immature tastebuds as the chemical-flavoured ethanol poisons being marketed to kids these days – gut rot like the Big Foot range.

It is marketed by Independent Liquor in this way on its website: "BIG FOOT bourbon RTD fills the gap in the market where bigger is definitely better. This 1.25-litre multi-serve pack suits those who like to pour their own and is the perfect quality bourbon in a big serve bottle."

I would be interested in the results should the "quality bourbon" claim ever be challenged and tested. However, it is difficult to see how they can get away with producing kids' giggle-juice so blatantly.

Yes, it contains lower alcohol by volume than some drinks, but can't you just see youngsters holding time-trials and sculling competitions with this stuff – sold in bottles similar to cola and lemonade? I can, as, I bet, can those pillars, I mean pillocks, of the business world, the booze barons.

I'm no wowser. I'll have a beer or a wine after work every now and then, and respect others' right to drink more.

Problem drinking, however, is not just a youth issue. We need to ask some hard questions about where youngsters are learning to place such emphasis on drink.

Nelson, for example, seems to lurch merrily from one arts or music festival to the next. I'm always staggered at the number of us who seem incapable of making it through a two-hour concert without chugging away on sauvignon blanc.

When Moana brought her Tribe to Founders for the arts festival last year, some loser just across from us scoffed about a dozen stubbies from a backpack, burping and farting away, before stumbling to the loos during the show, resuming his seat and continuing his merry journey towards inebriation. Some of us cannot even endure a night at the movies without a glass or two of wine or beer. What's with that?

Then there are sports clubs. They are more responsible now than when I played senior rugby for a season or two in my 20s, but for too many players, the weekly after-match function remains the primary attraction – and perhaps even a pre-requisite for making the starting lineup.

Perhaps I'm lucky. I seem not to have an addictive personality. I went cold turkey on a 30-a-day smoking habit when I decided one day that it would be quite nice to watch my children grow up. Having made that determination, quitting was relatively easy.

And so to booze. My father would not have had alcohol poisoning on his death certificate – a heart attack actually finished him off at just 46 – but it was essentially alcohol that got him, drink by drink, drip by drip. He might have passed to me a lesson about the potential dangers of booze, although I still had a good few too many on odd occasions, long after he died. But essentially, it's simpler than that – I simply decided I hate hangovers.

The Government's belated response to the Law Commission's recommendations will be instructive.

Administrations that are happy to pour millions into international yachting teams rugby tournaments, or even securing giant pandas, yet pander to booze barons' lobbying, while continuing to dismantle alcoholism rehabilitation facilities, are failing our young people and the problem drinkers that too many of them will become.

- © Fairfax NZ News