Lockout laws work: regulation key to curbing alcohol abuse
When it comes to the alcohol industry and the public interest it seems fair to say never the twain shall meet. The alcohol industry, which encompasses what is rather euphemistically known as the hospitality industry, exists to manufacture and sell alcohol. As far as this industry is concerned, the more we drink, the better.
The industry is keen to remind the community, and especially their critics, that millions of Australians enjoy alcohol and that the industry employs many thousands of men and women and pays several billion of dollars of tax every year. However, even some insiders acknowledge alcohol is a double-edged sword. For many drinkers, alcohol is a sociable drug. But it also accounts for an uncomfortable number of deaths, severe injuries, social damage and substantial costs to the economy. The harm from alcohol dwarfs the problems with illicit drugs.
One thing the industry and its critics all can virtually agree on is that prohibiting alcohol makes a bad problem worse and is not the answer. Alcohol prohibition in the US (1920-33) was a disaster. Unsurprisingly, critics of the prohibition of illicit drugs often trot out its negative experience.
Few Australians would recall that we, too, had a long, equally unhappy experience with alcohol prohibition. But this was reserved only for Australia’s indigenous people and still lingered in parts of the country until the 1970s.
While today the carnage from alcohol among Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is horrifying, the results of attempting to prohibit alcohol were sometimes even worse. Many Aboriginal communities were divided about alcohol bans, with some, such as painter Albert Namatjira, having legal permission to consume alcohol personally but not allowed to provide it to other indigenous people, who had a deeply embedded custom of sharing all they had.
Decades ago, the power and political influence of the combined alcohol industries was held in check, to an extent, by the countervailing power of the Christian churches. But as the power of organised religion declined, the only countervailing power still standing up to defend the public interest has been a loose coalition of relatively weak public health organisations and advocates.
Public health advocates often cite the experience of the gin epidemic of early 18th-century England. After William of Orange came to the English throne in 1689, Dutch influence in Britain increased. This allowed the Dutch to introduce gin, their new invention. Decades later, when Britain went to war with France, controls were introduced to reduce the importation of French brandy. As the price of gin slumped, sales soared and so did public drunkenness, violence and myriad other problems. Tightening the regulation of liquor outlets and an increase in the price of grains eventually reduced the problems associated with drinking gin to more acceptable levels.
This is an experience we should not forget: the answer to alcohol is improving its regulation but never trying to eradicate it.
As public health experts rightly repeat over and over again, we know what works to reduce the scale of alcohol problems: slight increases in price, slight reductions in availability and replacing the industry self-regulation of alcohol advertising, marketing and promotion with a system of community controls.
Currently, the alcohol industry sets the rules for regulating alcohol advertising, appoints the judge and jury, ensures only token punishments in case of adverse judgments and ignores cases where adverse findings are ignored. Extreme libertarians, such as Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, argue that it’s all about individual choice and freedom. But the problem with this approach is that when the alcohol market is left to its own devices, we end up with versions of the English gin epidemic.
Under Tony Abbott, public health advocacy was weakened. The pendulum swung to the alcohol industry and vested interests and away from the public interest. It’s time, under a new prime minister, to find a more sensible balance between the rights of the individual to behave irresponsibly with alcohol and the rights of other citizens to live in safety.
We live in a community with a system of universal healthcare. So we all, in effect, pay part of our neighbours’ health expenses arising from excessive drinking.
Australia’s alcohol problems were one of the many issues that Kevin Rudd briefly examined. But his government did nothing of substance to address the many problems caused by the chronic misuse of alcohol.
Since then, the Henry 2010 tax review recommended that Australia should review the taxation arrangements for alcohol. Nothing came of this recommendation. But sadly the availability of alcohol in most parts of Australia has continued to increase.
Despite this, NSW lockout laws in Newcastle and Sydney’s Kings Cross, which include the reduction of selling hours, usefully reminds us that alcohol-related violence can be reduced significantly by slightly tightening up alcohol availability.
It was 18-year-old Thomas Kelly’s death by a single punch from an intoxicated stranger in Kings Cross in July 2012 that directly led to these lockout laws. As his younger brother, Stuart Kelly, exhorted in a recent passionate speech in Sydney, not only does lockout legislation need to be preserved but, to prevent senseless violence, a change in law and attitude is urgently required to stop the widespread scourge of alcohol abuse and misuse.
It’s time we took alcohol much more seriously and stopped giving the industry everything it wants.
Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 37 books, including My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey.
Source: The Australian, Ross Fitzgerald, 3rd October 2015
Originally published as: Lockout laws work: regulation key to curbing alcohol abuse
