Australia's alcohol idiot problem

[purple.cow]

I think it's past time the Australian government treated the problems associated with alcohol as it has been doing for a long time with cigarettes and smoking because while smoking is harmful to a person's health it usually only affects the smoker in a serious way themselves, whereas the problems arising from grog harm many around the drunken idiot.

Heavy drinking results in public brawling to the extent where death occurs to both the drinker and others they see fit to harm.

Heavy drinkers also seriously abuse kids and partners, both physically and mentally.

Alcohol abuse is a growing issue among our young people.

Alcohol abuse costs the country millions of dollars every year through loss of productivity due to the drinker chucking sickies because they are hungover or suffering ill effects of grog the following day.

Alcohol abuse results in way too many deaths and injuries on our roads every year.

alcoholics cost our public health system millions every years due to the serious issues it causes to the abuser.

I could go on and on about the bad side of grog, but it will start sounding as though I'm totally anti-grog if I do, when in fact I have absolutely nothing against anyone enjoying a drink or two, but I have a hell of a lot against what abusing the stuff causes.

So, I think it's time that the Australian government takes a far more serious approach to the subject.

To do this they should start off with banning all alcohol/and alcohol related products from public advertising - just as they did with smoking products many years ago.

Next they should slap on an immediate minimum tax price rise of 10% for all alcohol and alcohol related products, to be followed up within 6 months with a further 10% price rise on the lot.

These price rises should also hit the home grog making products market too.

additionally all consuming of ALL alcohol products should be totally banned from all public venues and licensing hours over the entire country should be reduced to far more reasonable hours, say midnight in all clubs and pubs etc.

Do you think I'm goping over the top?

OK, you may think so, but I'm sick to death of seeing the results of alcohol abuse at all levels in this country, and I can see no good reason why my tax dollors should go toward fighting a losing battle against the problems arising from grog abuse.

I've also been forced to attend too many funerals of innocent bystanders killed due to bloody idiot's bad habits while they walk away from it all almost Scot free.

[buzzlightyearsgirlfriend]

[ten*teeny*tiny*toes]

Another problem is that young people are mixing Alcohol with energy drinks like Red Bull.
Sixty minutes ran a story a while back. Scary stuff.
Normal safety measures of too much alcohol like falling asleep or passing out are negated. They just get more **bleep** and for longer 😞

[ca04]

The main problem is people are not matureing much anymore.

I grew up in a 10am to 10pm pub hours but some states pubs had to  be closed from 6 pm to 8 pm

so hopefully people would go home for tea.I used to party wildly untill into my 20s then decieded to

be a bit more responsible  which actually lead to my loosing the taste for the stuff.

most people then drank to enjoy the company not to get drunk and did not revel in how hopelessly

drunk they were.Pubs were quick to turn the beer off for any that appeared to be too drunk or got

aggressive.People also respected each other more in those days.

[spotweldersfriend]

Well,most of them get hammered in venues.Enforce the law i.e any establishment caught serving alcohol to drunks gets heavily fined.3 strikes and you get shut down for 6 months.

[buzzlightyearsgirlfriend]

When a box of goon can be bought for under 10 bucks then it's a no-brainer that we have so many people with alcohol problems in this country.

I have a couple actually a few, I just counted again, of alkies in my family.

One is an ex-brother in law who I allowed to crash at my place for a few months to stop him sleeping in his car in the middle of winter (yes, I need to have SUCKER tattooed on my forehead, how dumb can a person be...).

I knew he drank but I had no idea how much. I knew he could be a b a s t a r d and then, after him crashing here, I realised it was mostly because he was drunk 24/7.

When he finally moved out after a few tantrums from me and him finding another more stupid enabler,  I had to break down and recycle 37, empty 4 litre boxes of cheap claret that he was hiding behind the sofa in the sun-room.  That works out to about 3, 4 litre boxes of goon a week. That's 12 litres of wine a week. He was also drinking alcoholic cider when he got home from work AS A TRUCK DRIVER!!!! before he started on the goon.

37 **bleep**ing boxes!

[acacia_pycnantha]

I'm going to say it again because I still don't think that you guys get it.

It's not the availability of alcohol nor its price which is the problem; it is the culture of blokey, macho, anti-intellectualism which is to blame. Then throw alcohol into the mix and it's a recipe for disaster.

In Germany one can legally buy beer, wine and even champagne at 16 yrs of age.

France has a long history of appreciating alcohol. A bottle of wine on the dinner table every night.

In Italy there is wine on the table along with a bottle of water and the children drink the wine, suitably diluted by their responsible elders.

It is not the alcohol which is the problem.

The problem is  our low-brow culture which, when booze is added, creates all sorts of nightmare behaviour which is just not present to the same degree in more cultured countries where they teach their kids to admire the great philosophers instead of their local booze-sponsored sporting heros.

[acacia_pycnantha]

What is also part of the problem is for people to suggest ever fiercer rstrictions on the sale of alcohol.

Doing this makes them feel they can address and even solve the problem.

By doing this, those people are only exemplifying that they are also part of our anti-intellectual culture.

A quick fix. No considered thought involved. Reactionary and ultimately a useless and ineffectual gesture.

[topsidesoul]

Stop this talk about controlling booze.

It's and Australian tradition to get drunk and do stupid things, ask Peta Credlin.

How about you question parents for not doing their jobs properly and raising drunk A**clowns?

[acacia_pycnantha]

I don't think that controlling booze is part of the solution.

I do think that we need to control and upgrade what we teach our impressionable youth.

They need better heros and better models for behaviour.

They need to be taught about the great ideas and how not to just react at their base, animalistic  level.

They need to be taught Culture in the real sense of the word and idea.

[i-need-a-martini]

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@punch*drunk wrote:

There's simply no need for clubs/pubs, or anything much else, to be open all night. Bringing back earlier closing times would definitely help, nothing will stop the problem though, its been going on as long as there's been alcohol.

Parents need to shoulder a lot of the blame too, letting kids drink too young thinking that they wont over indulge when they get older seems to have the opposite effect from what I've seen.

---

2 things I disagree with:

Firstly,

a) it isn't only drunken yobs that stay up beyond midnight. When I go out with my friends we often don't make it home until the early morning after a great night out. My should our night out come to a screeching halt at midnight?

b) youngsters don't get tight at pubs and clubs. They can't afford to. They all start their drinking way before they ever arrive. I have a nephew who binge drinks every Friday and Saturday night. They meet at a friends house with an assortment of bottles and they go through the lot before they even leave the house. They buy their alchohol at a bottleshop, not a pub.

Secondly,

As a child of Italian parents, I drank wine with dinner from a young age. It was just a part of my life. But my parents made it clear that drinking was an important part of my social education but being drunk was disrespectful to them, my friends and myself.

But parents usually do dumb things or give their kids dumb messages when it comes to drinking. They either:

a) ban them from drinking until they are 18. Bad mistake when kid rebels big time.

b) think they are clever by 'allowing' their kids to start drinking in their early teens. But they make a big song and dance of it so that the activity of drinking becomes a bigger deal than it needs to be.

c) they set bad drinking examples themselves.