Lately there have been quite a lot of headlines about our nation's biggest drug problem: Alcohol.
Headline after headline has proclaimed that Australians are drinking too much, hospital emergency rooms are overburdened, Aboriginal communities in dire straits, and 27% of deaths of Australians aged 15-29 are related to alcohol. Now it has been found that breast cancer incidence does not merely correlate with alcohol consumption; alcohol is a direct cause of breast cancer and colorectal cancer.
Yet I haven't heard a peep from either of the major political parties on this 'scourge'. I haven't heard dramatic promotions for Today Tonight or A Current Affair touting stories on this deadly 'epidemic' of drug abuse in Australia. No-one wants to touch it, but everyone is all too willing to slam the Greens for their plan to decriminalise personal use of drugs like marijuana and amphetamines, focusing instead on cracking down on manufacturers and dealers. Alcohol is a highly socially acceptable drug, it's fun in moderation, and there's a lot of money to be made from it. It would be a brave politician to promise higher taxes for alcohol, or force limits on the amount sold to people.
Squealing about the Greens' drug policies kind of takes the focus off the real problem, doesn't it?
Disclaimer: I do enjoy the occasional drink or few.
3 comments:
I'm glad you posted about this, Sarah. This has bothered me for a while now, the ignorance surrounding alcohol. Alcohol causes so much destruction, in all sorts of different ways - from personal health to family problems to physical violence, etc. And you're absolutely right - no one wants to go near it. Alcohol is still glamourised to the extreme in advertising. To absurd levels, in fact. And it's everywhere. I honestly would have thought that these days, we might have been seeing more than just "enjoy responsibly" on a bottle of booze. I myself do like drinking and it's true, I can't exactly say I'd LIKE to see statistics on the side of a stubbie. But I would, at least, like to see a reduction in the level of in-your-face advertising promoting grog as a heavenly potion.
I myself have dabbled in sobriety on the odd occasion.
But seriously, we have warnings on snack foods that the product was made within a square kilometre of peanut/egg processing equipment that was once operating during the war – just on the off chance that there might be traces consumed.
I imagine we’ll have compulsory warnings on the edges of paper (beware paper cuts!) before warnings on grog.
I think part of the problem is the binge drinking culture that has sprung up. Why has it sprung up? What can we do to stop it.
Unfortunately the ALP get a lot of money from the Hotel's association.
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