by Gareth Hughes
Nikki Kaye (National), Heather Roy (ACT), Trevor Mallard (Labour), Gareth Hughes (Green Party)
Today I was proud to be part of cross-party group of MPs that launched a petition in support for the Keep It 18 campaign, which is opposing the Government’s plans to raise the alcohol purchasing age to 20.
Keep it 18 comprises a number of unlikely bed-fellows – the youth wings of The Greens, ACT, Labour, and National who agree that raising the drinking age is an ill-advised move.
I am opposed to raising the age or introducing a split regime between on and off licenses because it is unfair, ineffective, and avoids the real problem, our drinking culture. I also feel it is an unfair scapegoating of young people – another battle from the war on youth.
Raising the drinking age will be ineffective. One of the issues that rightly concern the Government is the age at which young people first try alcohol ALAC found it was 13.8 in 2006/07, and 14.6 in 2009/10. While all under-age, this is rising over time. Raising the drinking age to 20 isn’t going to stop 16 year olds getting hold of alcohol – if a 16 year old wants to get drunk, they are (if they are anything like my friends in High School were) going to mix a potent “rocket-fuel” from their parents’ liquor cabinet or find other sources. Increasing the age on its own, without looking at the huge number of liquor outlets, or the massive amounts spent on advertising or event sponsorship will be ineffective at reducing harm.
The proposed changes are unfair. On your 18th birthday, you’re given a raft of rights and responsibilities: you’re allowed to vote, fight and die for your country, smoke, get a credit card, marry, and gamble. I find it frankly ridiculous that we would then go and deny the 140,000 18 and 19 year-olds in New Zealand the right to buy a bottle of wine, especially considering 92% of heavy drinkers are over 20. Targeting 18 and 19 year olds and ignoring the wider cultural drinking problem is politically expedient nonsense.
I think that the Police had it about right in their “It’s not the drinking, it’s how we’re drinking” campaign. In the spirit of the Keep It 18 unity, I’d like to quote ACT MP Heather Roy, who said “Inappropriate consumption is inappropriate at age 14, age 18 or 20, age 35, age 60 or age 99.”
New Zealand’s awful drinking culture is a widely recognised problem, yet it’s so often swept out of sight as it’s very difficult to tackle. Huge numbers of New Zealanders engage in risky drinking behaviours, like binge drinking and drunk driving.
Ultimately, we do need to do something about the appalling attitudes Kiwis have towards alcohol and the Law Commission Report, pointed to a number of these. I think the answer must look at alcohol accessibility (price, location and hours); reducing massive alcohol advertising and sport and event sponsorship; and public education.
We’re not going to achieve the needed changes by turning the rights of 140,000 New Zealanders into an emotionally charged political football. Our problem drinking won’t be fixed by scapegoating 18 and 19 year olds so I say we stop trying to mess with the rights of Kiwi youth, and Keep It 18.
Cheers.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Tue, May 3rd, 2011
Tags: 18, alcohol, Keep it 18
More posts by Gareth Hughes | more about Gareth Hughes
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it! Keep the law!
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However I oppose the use of price to manage drinking. That just replaces age discrimination with income discrimination – the price increase has a disproportionate impact on the budgets of those on lower incomes.
While I can see relevance to limiting hours of local supply access (so the drunk don’t purchase locally in the evenings and to reduce drink driving), I don’t see hours of bars or supermarket supply as a problem.
I also don’t support attacks on sport and event sponsorship. Sport and event hosts won’t find money from other sources easy to come by and this is not the cause of binge drinking anyhow. Nor is product advertising.
If people want to mange the binge drinking problem or the drink driving problem, they target these things, not everything else – expressing their blame on the young, the poor, the product itself, the corporate or anything but the source problem.
Binge drinking prevention requires more than host reponsibility it requires legal restraint and that means defining drunkenness by blood level (as we do for driving) and prosecuting those who are drunk in public. It’s how we restrained drink driving and it’s the only way to minimise drunkeness. If we are not prepared to confront those who think its OK to get drunk (as we did the drunk driver) then we should say so and admit this and give up on alchol law reform that omits any focus on the real issue.
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There are always emotive & extremist views, e.g. raising the drinking age back to 20 or even higher. BUT like the drug laws, extreme options just drive it underground & create black-markets. Good onya Gareth, stay with 18 years. If they are old enough to vote & go to war, they should be mature enough to have a drink ! Kia-ora
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I’m on the opposite side of the fence primarily because I believe there needs to be a big gap between the drinking age and driving age. I just don’t see the sense of putting drink and cars legally in people’s purview at the same time. Clearly there are some mitigating points here and Gareth makes them above – kids get booze anyway, and just raising the age doesn’t address the drinking culture. With regard to the latter, I think there are a whole raft of measures that the Govt could introduce but hasn’t. However I don’t see lack of will at the Govt-level as being a reason not to introduce individual measures like raising the drinking age. With respect to the former – what was the average age people were first trying drink in 1989? That’s when I started – was given a flagon by a mate at a party when I was 15. had tried to get into the bottle store prior but failed to get any booze myself because I was 15 and looked 15! Might have been easier of the drinking age was 18 back then, not 20. Obviously I don’t have the stats to prove it but I am sure that there were less younger people drinking to excess frequently in this days then there are now. Obviously we did drink to excess whenver we had the chance but there were less easy opportunities to procure booze then so, in my opinion, fewer young people were drinking tyo excess less frequently and at an older average age then now. Plus the driving age was 15 so I had 5 years of driving practice before I was able to legally drink, and 3 years before I could get regular access to alcohol (at the local rugby club). So back to my original point – I think there needs to be more seperation between the drinking age and the driving age. Plus I probably agree that it needs to be harder to access alcohol.
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Dobbie has your point not been met by having a zero alcohol level for young drivers?
Back in the 70′s people were drinking a lot by their 6th form year and access to alcohol by those of that age (when the age was 20) was easy -but because the drinkign was done at home parties there was not the same media attention – except when the police had to close down parties (one impact of the age 18 level for bars is less home parties and police call out to these).
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Well. I do not think children (which we all were at 18) should be making decisions on taking drugs, including alcohol, or going to war.
Voting is a different matter. They should have a say in their future. That age should be 15 or 16.
20 should be the age when people are considered adults for making decisions on drinking, drugs or going to war, given the latest research on when a persons brain develops. Especially young males.
Further to that, experience, in other countries and our own, shows that the war on drugs only enriches criminals. Decriminalising minor drug use and spending that money on addiction treatment instead cuts drug use.
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And don’t forget SPC, a lot of the young drinkers that are causing problems come from wealthy backgrounds, so they would still be able to purchase alcohol quite easily.
The first step that needs to be made before we start toying around with laws is to get the current system of laws enforced properly. I worked in a supermarket for five years and the Police only stung us twice during that period – there needs to be more stings to catch out those people that are selling to minors; preferably hitting each liquor outlet at least every three months.
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SPC
I sympathise and mostly agree. Problem is price is the one mechanism that is proved to work.
What do you think about a *minimum* price? I type this whilst supping on a glass of Pinot Gris sold as a loss leader by my local supermarket. So I would suffer, but why should I be able to buy a bottle of wine for $7?
peace
W
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given the latest research on when a persons brain develops
I have looked at some of that brain research. It is confirmation bias plus plus. The researches expected to find changes in brain structure during the process where psychologists measured change…
I am sure of you looked for similar changes between 25 – 35 or 35 – 45 you would find them.
peace
W
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I would agree with the comment:
I am opposed to raising the age or introducing a split regime between on and off licenses because it is unfair, ineffective, and avoids the real problem, our drinking culture.
If he was doing something about the drinking culture. I’ve heard of a 5 point plan that’s supposed to change the culture that an NZ academic is proposing, but the government doesn’t implement it – if he was supporting that I could have some respect for the above claim.
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Voting is a different matter. They should have a say in their future. That age should be 15 or 16.
Oh really, so you would happily open up youngsters to the exploitation of some of the most corrupt people in the country at an age where it is almost impossible to get a balanced view on anything let alone politics.
Raising the voting age to 25 would actually make more sense, and that is a pretty dumb idea.
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Much as I love this green page and am so glad your voice is heard in Parliament, I nevertheless feel that you are a total fool when it comes to alcohol use. And -no less- that you are proud of it. While you want to abolish smoking, you are furthering the leading cause of death: drunk driving, breast cancer, prain damage, child abuse, poverty and many more. How can anyone with a good conscience not pick up the fight against alcohol during a time of our children when their brains and bodies are still at a developmental stage -and at the easyly ruined stage- that is utterly beyond my understanding.
Do reconsider. !!!!
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If the age is not a problem staying at 18 why not lower it further to say 16 or 15 or 13 of this is the average of first consumption. Why criminalise purchase if that is “what they are going to do anyway”? Further lets acknowledge and accept binge drinking as a valid and reasonable part of alcohol consumption and simply minimise the harms by providing (injection) ingestion rooms that ensure harms from alcohol consumption are minimised. Or perhaps we could medicalise the problem by providing a pharmac substitute, a drunk pill that knocks you out after 30 minutes of being pi**ed thus preventing drunk driving.
Just some ideas from the sidelines…
“Peace”
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It’s really about adults setting laws and adults being subject to those laws.
As we don’t expect those under 18 to leave school and work and if anything seek them to continue education or training till they are 18 the age is sort of set as the age of adult status.
Yeah adults set the laws those under 18 operate by …, from the driving age, leaving school etc.
The issue is not so much criminalising purchase by those under 18 but requiring that they get their alcohol from a responsible elder – we don’t criminalise their drinking alcohol.
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20, it should never have been lowered to start with. Waiting till I was 20 didn’t kill me at the time.
Get it out of supermarkets too.
Ban all advertising/sponsorship.
And other measures to reign in this beast.
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To me the main point is if raising the age will be ineffective or not. The ‘experts’ seem to disagree. If it helps a little bit I am supporting it – even though there some weeak points and inconsistencies.
Like Gareth I think, many more important things could/should be done (too).
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For a start I think having it in Supermarkets offers far more control than selling it at those mini marts on Queen Street that are open till 1am.
Age limits and price increases wont work, and seek only to penalise responsible people, solution.. make the purchase of alcohol (and brewing equipment)require a licence.
- If you get caught drink driving you lose it
- If you get done for drunk and disorderly behaviour you lose it
- If you supply to a minor you lose it
- If you supply to unlicensed person you lose it
- If you get hauled up on drug charges you lose it
- If you get done for assualt you lose it.
- Make home brewing without licence illegal.
Back it up with stiff fines and jail terms for both purchasers and retailers who break the rules.
We expect the same measures for firearms and they cause significantly less damage to society than alcohol.
You'll always get a few people that dont follow the law but generally most people are decent and will fall into line.
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It’s not a bad idea, a buyer card that has obligations, but just think what this government would do with it – charge us an annual fee for having one.
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Abstention in Paris, or is that absentia – the French resolve to end prohibition of the green fairy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13159863
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Id be happy to pay a 2 yearly renewal fee of say $50 for such a card if it meant people would lay off calling for prices rises and restrictions on alcohol.
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We don’t need more legislation on alcohol but need to address the issues of harmful use. The idea of an id card for alcohol will create more work for the police and would be too expensive and troublsome to instigate for the government and for business.
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You could be right Andrew, its unfotunate people dont think the same way when it comes to control of firearms in New Zealand.
The police and government would happily spend millions of your tax $$$ controlling a large number of law abiding gun owners with endless ineffective legislation, its happening again with Arms Amendment Bill 4.
Yet alcohol which is a far greater problem gets very little attention in regards to controls on who can and cant buy. Simply show you are 18 and get shitfaced to your hearts content.
You will never stop hard core abusers getting their hands on it, but I gaurantee if you introduce a licence system you will see the majority of those drunken troublesome people lose their means to buy alcohol.
It works for firearms as proven by our ultra low incidents of gun crime and how hard it is for unlicensed joe average to buy a firearm.
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100% agree with the samiam
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How is getting it out of supermarkets going to be any different ? especially considering the problem drink of choice is RTDs and Spirits which supermarkets dont sell anyway. If anything the problem is those little alcohol shops that are open till 1am in the morning on Friday and Saturday nights.
Maturity wise there isnt much difference between an 18yo and 20yo, and besides, 16 year olds are still getting their booze somehow regardless of law.
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