Butts out but boozing is up

I am often told that tobacco and alcohol are different. True, but what I am comparing to tobacco is toxic levels of drinking, not just any drinking. I’m talking about patterns of drinking that cause short-term injury right through to death, and which can also lead to long-term chronic illness and eventual death.

Why have we taken tobacco seriously and been absolute wooses when dealing with the harms of alcohol? Why is there a $25 million federally-funded campaign against youth smoking and against the tobacco companies, yet the Government is putting $5 million into the “Drinkwise” campaign with the alcohol industry?

Will we be able to halt the inexorable rise in problem drinking in Oz? It will be very tough for several reasons.

The first is that as a nation we under-estimate the health and social damage that alcohol causes, and the second is the power of the alcohol industry. They, not unlike the tobacco industry, have a dubious history of strenuously opposing effective approaches to reduce harmful drinking. They opposed random breath testing in the 1970s and 1980s, fought standard drink labelling in 1990s, and now present their annual case to the federal treasurer to stop any increases in alcohol taxes.

We know what to do. Professors Wayne Hall and Robin Room in the latest Medical Journal of Australia say that if we are serious about reducing harm from alcohol then we should focus on strategies that have strong evidence - increase taxes, raise the minimum age of drinking, reduce outlet density, reduce trading hours, enforce licensing laws and continue to enforce random breath testing. Just do it!