Binge Drinking, Teenage Drinking, Public Drunkenness, Domestic Violence, Physical and Verbal Abuse are all known to be closely connected to the use and/or abuse of alcohol. So why do our elected officials hypocritically criticise the misuse of alcohol on one hand whilst making it increasingly easier to get on the other and then think that raising the drinking age will solve the problem.
Do you believe the advertising industry thinks of the negative impacts when promoting their products, of course not. Just as the car industry worries about pollution the breweries worry about drunks.
Holy Mother of Mary in some places you can even get a haircut while being able to get a drink. I doubt it will be very long before you can buy a Jim Beam at the Mc.Donald’s Drive-thru (sic) or the Churches install bars in the Parish Hall. When a Pole Dancer waves it in front of your face it’s hard to ignore and it’s the same with booze.
Oh! Dear we need a law to stop binge drinking but not one that stops kids from buying it. We need a law to prevent young people buying it but not one that prevents them from serving it. We need a law that stops people from drinking and driving but not driving with drink. Only the other day I was at the NQR checkout when a customer tried to buy alcohol and was refused. The Cashier was under the age of 18, and fearful either of us might have been with the Thought Police told the customer they would have to come back when someone older was manning the shop. The look I got from the other customer was that of total disbelief.
Once it was only ‘people of good character’ who were licensed to sell alcohol now it’s the unchecked and possibly under-aged operators of Aldi, Woolies, Coles and twenty dozen Bottle Shops who are allowed to shove it in your shopping bag.
We forget that children can access drugs and alcohol easier than they can access schools or training courses and unable to get one will go for the other, and lest we forget the era of ‘Prohibition in America’ when organised crime took off like an Atlas Rocket and is still out of control. And don’t get me onto the subject of C.I.A backed Heroine which flooded back into the United States with returning troops from Vietnam.
But is it just alcohol or a combination of alcohol and drugs? I believe illicit drugs are far more dangerous than alcohol will ever be, and a few pills popped with your Red Bull can be far more devastating than a bottle of Vodka. As cigarette smoking was reduced by education of the health effects and not by price so the same can be done for all manner of drugs whether they be prescription or not.
From an early age we are teaching our children to pop pills for all manner of health control or benefi and making it a positive activity. Our kids become so involved with pills that make you feel ‘better’ it is not a very big step to take before pills that make you feel ‘good’ are just as readily consumed without any thought of the consequences, after all Mummy gave me pills three times a day and they didn’t do me any harm.
Much of the problem of alcohol fuelled violence is with a combination of booze and drugs together, not just alcohol on its own.
In the end it is really drinking at home that is the problem. It’s not what is consumed it is where it is consumed. In the pub there is a certain amount of social and managerial control, step out of line and you soon get to know about it but in the privacy of the home it is unchecked open season for violence, abuse and assault with no social controls or supervision. Maybe it’s not drinking and driving that’s the real social problem but the home environment in which it is consumed.
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