Tapu Misa: Liquor reformers answering victims' pleas

We have an alcohol problem, but like most alcoholics, many of us are in denial. Photo / Northern Advocate

We should add the South Auckland liquor store owner Navtej Singh to our mounting alcohol toll.

With 16-year-old King's College student James Webster who died just over a week ago, and Amy Rose Allen, a pretty 22-year-old whose family was shown on Close Up the night they decided to switch off her life support. She'd been drinking when she crashed her car, despite already having four drink-driving charges against her name.

Not long before Amy Rose killed herself on the road and James Webster drank himself to death, the Law Commission released its weighty report on alcohol - 514 pages and 153 recommendations designed to "curb the harm" that alcohol wreaks in our society.

This wasn't inspired timing on the commission's part; simply a reflection of reality.

The commission may not have needed such stark illustrations of the human cost of our drinking culture - it has cold, hard evidence (and some 1320 footnotes) on its side - but there's no doubt that the emotional force of such public tragedies make a powerful argument for change.

We have an alcohol problem, but like most alcoholics, many of us are in denial.

The man leading the charge for a comprehensive change in our liquor laws and drinking culture, Law Commission head Sir Geoffrey Palmer, is ironically the same man who ushered in the 1989 act that liberalised our liquor laws.

Palmer and his colleagues were aiming for a more sophisticated drinking culture, the kind they thought existed in Europe "but on further examination doesn't seem to exist there any more either".

Maybe it never did.

He still believes that liberalisation was a good idea, that we have a more vibrant cafe and restaurant culture as a result.

But he's been converted to the view, by parents, teachers, police, and health professionals - those people who have to deal with our unsophisticated drunks - that the pendulum has swung too far.

As a mother of teenagers, I find it hard not to agree. We don't let much stand between alcohol and our children these days. Kids grow up in an alcohol-sodden culture, believing not only that alcohol is benign but that they're entitled to it.

We can blame poor parenting for this, as many do; or we can get real about the powerful cultural forces influencing our children.

Don't get me wrong; I'm very fond of alcohol. The first time I went to a pub, I was 18 and in the company of workmates. My parents were non-drinkers, so I'd never developed a liking for beer or wine. I was 20 before my colleagues found a drink I could tolerate; gin and tonic, and only because the tonic made it sweet enough to drink.

Most of us don't acquire a taste for alcohol until we're more mature; and that's a good thing, considering our brains don't stop developing until around age 25. But the sugary "alcopops" marketed at our kids cleverly get round that taste barrier, masking the taste of alcohol, for less than the price of bottled water.

The commission's proposals have already come in for criticism: It won't make any difference. It's too nanny-ish. And why should a responsible majority have to suffer for the sins of an irresponsible few?

Says Palmer: "The measures recommended are research based, and the research shows they will make a difference. People may not like the measures, that is a different thing.

"Price makes a difference. Availability makes a difference. Age makes a difference. The number of licences makes a difference. The level of enforcement makes a difference."

The evidence shows, too, that problem drinking isn't the preserve of an "aberrant minority".

A majority of Kiwis get drunk occasionally, and 700,000 typically drink large quantities, putting themselves and others at risk. As well, many of those who call themselves responsible drinkers may be among the third whose daily intake is pushing their rate of dying from alcohol related causes to above 1 in 100.

Alcohol isn't an ordinary commodity, no matter how often it's advertised alongside milk and bread. The World Health Organisation calls it "carcinogenic to humans"; it contributes directly to more than 60 diseases and conditions.

The police rank it as the drug that causes them the most problems. It is a factor in violent crime, homicides, child injuries and death, drink driving, and a range of offences involving young people.

Not surprisingly, alcohol exacts its heaviest toll on poor communities. It was in Porirua and Otara that the Law Commission heard the most passionate pleas for change.

It can be hard for those who don't live in those communities to understand how the proliferation of cheap, easily available booze can blight an already struggling community.

But the commission listened, saying: "The impetus for this review did not come from epidemiologists raising concerns about rates of hazardous drinking. Rather, it arose from a growing intolerance of the actual harm being experienced by the community."

Tapu.Misa@gmail.com