David Penberthy's article

I wonder if David Penberthy has read one word of research on alcohol? Or is he relying solely on the ultimate anecdotal evidence of all – his own drinking?
We have an epidemic of binge drinking including  a spike in children receiving brain damage from alcohol, out of control rates of alcohol related violence, and we see Penberthy stating that ‘a boozy day at the races’ is a ‘truly excellent feature of life in Australia’.
He then falls into ostracising ‘hardcore halfwits’ for the crime of being out of control whilst consuming a disinhibiting drug designed just to do that – put you out of control.

Ostracising the victims of alcohol is a well trodden path for the spruikers of binge drinking. In fact the British Medical Association latest report on alcohol marketing notes this technique as being one of the many marketing methods used in Big Liquor’s 600 million pound Under the Line marketing program. That is, the marketing efforts not visible to the public.

Our Victorian Government has failed to adopt sensible harm minimisation measures such as a ban on alcohol marketing, a min age of 21 for alcohol purchase and consumption or a maximum drink walking limit of 08.They cannot explain in one phrase at what point responsible drinking ends. Millions of dollars spent, no knowledge transferred.
Our government, media and community leaders need to stop getting into bed with Big Liquor and start thinking of them as the enemy. They are not a harmless bunch of business people going about a harmless, fun activity. Their stuff indiscriminately kills, maims and injures.

In the context of this environment, how many negative, unconsciously destructive attitudes can one writer pump into an article about controlling the booze? To find out click here.

Well done, although some might argue for even shorter hours and greater limits to the number of outlets selling liquor after hours would be a good thing.  And why get involved in Big Event Boozing? Why get sucked into continuing to allow Big Liquor to profit from Big Events and continue to push the association of  ‘any excuse’ with binge drinking? This is what has occurred in Victoria and Queensland needs to make no concessions on liquor opening hours on the excuse of an event.

Great statistics and facts are provided such as:

1. 50-70% of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol
2. 60% of all alcohol-related incidents attended by police occur on or within sight of licensed premises
3. 60% of all police attendances and 90% of late night calls [involve] alcohol
4. The key predictor of levels of alcohol-related harm [is] the amount of alcohol consumed on the premises and the extent to which obviously intoxicated patrons continue to be served with alcohol.
5. Dealing with intoxicated persons can be dangerous and officers are at constant risk
6. Expenditure on police services to deal with alcohol sets the Queensland Taxpayer back some $500 per head of adult population in Queensland. That’s money you’ll never see again.

All good stuff, but the Police Union make no demands on the key component of this crisis. The alcohol consumer.

How would life be for Queensland Police Officers if all Queensland alcohol consumers were told in advance what the max. pedestrian BAC was, why it was 08, what the onerous fines and other penalties for transgressing that limit were, and how effective and omnipresent Random Breath Testing of alcohol consumers would be?

The 05 Campaign has shown that heavily set social norms can be challenged and changed via a partnership of legislation, education, promotion and just a touch of policing. Surely we now need to focus on challenging and changing the wider community attitudes to binge drinking!

See rationale behind the campaign here

See blog entries, including responses to media articles and government policies here.

One such individual is Professor Robin Room. Prof Room is Professor of Social Alcohol Research in the School of Population Health of the University of Melbourne and is Director, AER Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre.  Prof Room has a list of publications and research papers quite literally longer than this writer’s, right arm.  See list here!

In a conversation taking place whilst the Victorian State Government grants yet more liquor licences to yet more vertical drinking spaces, Prof Room was asked:

‘Would a pedestrian 08 limit have an effect on the amount of violence in our city?’

Prof Room stated:

‘If you could bring it in, and if you could effectively enforce it, it would substantially reduce violence in our city. It would substantially reduce the violence.’

Prof Room displayed no hesitation in stating this. None at all. It was clearly an obvious conclusion to a researcher in his field.

Take this on notice. If you want to immediately halt alcohol related violence in your city, innovate an 08 limit.

We need to bring to an end organised binge drinking as soon as humanly possible.

See rationale behind the campaign here

See blog entries, including responses to media articles and government policies here.

Latest research published in the Lancet proves this. In ‘Knowledge of drinking guidelines does not equal sensible drinking‘, by Antony C Moss, Kyle R Dyer and Ian P Albery, in reviewing UK’s current approach to alcohol-related policy, prevention, and treatment – largely copied in Australia – is ineffective and uncoordinated. The .’..platforms for action were revision of policies for the pricing and promotion of alcohol, mandatory labelling, and revised sensible drinking guidelines. The focus on clear labelling and guidance carries with it the assumption that providing such information and facilitating its comprehension will reduce irresponsible drinking behaviour.’

They then blow these assumptions out of the water. They actually found a group in the UK who actually knew the UK’s drinking guidelines! No mean feat. Better than that, all of the test group had previously ‘received a structured curriculum incorporating specific education on alcohol and other drug misuse’. Then they surveyed their drinking habits:

41% were found to be at risk of alcohol dependence! 56% reported heavy and binge drinking, 78% consumed alcohol hazardously,  65% reported experiencing alcohol-related harms, and 24% reported at least one occasion where they were not able to stop drinking once started. More than half were not considering engaging in ’sensible drinking’.

Upon these people rest the future of the UK’s Hospitals and Medical Care. The test group are current Medical Students…

So these are some of the headlines in today’s papers:

Exposed: Grog online too easy for under-age teen, Mark Russell, The Age
Safety rethink as pedestrian toll stays high, Reid Sexton, The Age

Don't drink it all at once

Mark Russell doesn’t mention how many times The Offending Retailer has been taken to court, prosecuted and fined, although we are left with the guess that this number is zero.

There is a lack of aggression on the part of Mark Russell, which is probably couched in a belief that no harm is really being done. If correct, this could not be further from the truth. An accompanying, motivated editorialist might be asking why does it take a newspaper to try out this sort of testing behaviour? What are the licensing bodies doing to earn their pay?  Have they been stifled by their minister? Should a hand sitter or two be immediately sacked?

What is desperately sad is the 3.5 billion dollars this corporate conglomerate pulls from liquor sales every year.
Unless any evidence appears to the contrary, the elephant in the room is still wandering about. In this instance the fact remains that too much alcohol consumed in Australia is consumed in a dangerous fashion. Too much over too short a period of time, demonstrating a massive cultural disconnect between the ’science’ of this drug with its general consumption patterns.
The shareholders of this conglomerate are beneficiaries of binge drinking, alcohol related violence and pedestrian deaths and injuries. They benefit from future illnesses and diseases including cancer that will surely come as every year of the binge drinking mentality prevails, unchallenged by government interest or controls. Alcohol is Australia’s 3rd Biggest Killer. Proving conglomerates can and do kill.

The other pachyderm to consider is the British Medical Association’s (amongst others) identification of too many liquor outlets making alcohol ubiquitously available.  This is clearly and demonstrably associated with higher alcohol consumption with the resultant increase in dangerous and deadly outcomes.

Mark doesnt appear to ‘get’ the concept that what he is discussing here is an evil distribution of a substance that is  ‘…a toxic and addictive drug that should be carefully regulated and controlled.’ Nothing in his article starts at this much needed touchstone.

All the research and best NON BRIBED minds in at least 2 continents point to the direct and immediate need to wind back distribution channels.

There is nothing to be gained by adding online distribution channels other than more pain and suffering. A real government would tell this soulless conglomerate and their boardroom buddies to stick to the groceries. That at least is vaguely honest work.

Reid Sextons piece again, sits in a silo of silo thinking. None of the protagonists mentioned in his story showing any idea of the overall context in which their common interest sits.

Inspector Parr, Bruce Corben, VicRoads and the TAC appear oblivious to the wider issues of the massive increase in unhealthy alcohol consumption that is happening now.

They note the increase in pedestrian deaths and injuries and it’s less offensive to recommend a reduction in speed limits isn’t it?  Let’s make the road safe for addicted and affected members of the public to cross the road on all fours! That’s keeping their silos tidy!

What a great idea, wait for this to happen

Over at the Herald-Sun, we have these headlines:

Bid for .02, Exclusive: Call for historic debate on drink-drive laws, Stephen Drill and Peter Rolfe, Herald Sun

Blow .02 and be a ‘bloody idiot’, Stephen Drill and Peter Rolfe, Herald Sun

Brit’s drug ban, Nui Te Koha, Herald Sun

The motorist 05 Campaign has succeeded so massively in overturning a dangerous and ugly culture of drink driving because it satisfied the 3 basic conditions for success:

1. It clearly and unambiguously sets an easily understandable rule not to be transgressed;
2. The consequences for transgressing this rule are proclaimed widely and are understood by all;
3. There is an efficient mechanism for enforcing this rule and the consequences are carried out.

This is why unWise Drink-Step-Watch-Back programs will never succeed in mass behaviour change. They fail all three conditions for success.  Big Liquor only sponsors programs that fail. If Big Liquor is sponsoring your program, look about for reasons why. The answer may not be to your liking.

Which brings us to the last reference, Britney Spears. Who knows if this report is accurate. It is ‘entertainment news’ afterall!

But, if true, if Britney can hold it together, it should ensure a trouble free tour.

All three conditions are met with flying colours.

1. She sets out easy to understand rules – no drugs including alcohol;
2. She tells you whats going to happen if caught – The Sack;
3. She then sets out an efficient process for catching transgressors – Random Drug Including Alcohol Tests.

Although an insurance or underwriting concern could be at the heart of the measure, Britney’s tour may clean up a few people’s lives in the process of making money.

She wins an honorary membership to The Pedestrian 08 Campaign. Whatever that is. Lucky Girl!

If only the AFL and the Carlton Football Club had listened to Britney, they would not be in the mess they are now.

If only the State of Victoria will listen to Britney and follow her example, our streets may be cleaned up, an enormous amount of crime avoided, and the number of victims piling into our accident and emergency departments, our gaols and our morgue will surely decrease.

Australia’s tragic history with a uniform progressive ‘liberalisation’ of alcohol laws include the implementation of spin based, deliberately ineffective ‘programs’ that have no proclaimed metrics for success; don’t take on responsibility for alcohol related violence; nor binge drinking; nor pedestrian deaths and injuries.

‘We need the community to make this work’ is the typical, buck passing refrain.

You will never hear ‘We WILL reduce the number of alcohol related ambulance call outs from [Victoria's 5000 per annum], by half, in our first year.’

You will never hear ‘We WILL halve the number of 11 year olds taking up alcohol at such a dangerous and inappropriate age.’

The problem has been the power Big Liquor has over our Governments, State and Federal, and our media.

Governments and media have continuously fallen into the trap of joint ‘industry-government’ and ‘industry-media’ partnerships.

The British Medical Association recently released a paper ‘Under the influence. The damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people’ in which it describes these relationships as serving to promoting alcohol rather than trying in any way, to restrict consumption. The BMA describes these initiatives as being a part of Big Liquor’s ‘Stakeholder Marketing’ strategy – see ‘6.2 Marketing by any other name’.

Stakeholder marketing by the alcohol industry, including partnership working and industry funded health education, has served the needs of the alcohol industry, not public health. In particular it has focussed attention on ineffective education initiatives and partial solutions, rather than evidence-based population level approaches.

In Melbourne, Australia, where I write this, we have heard this from Local and State-wide Newspapers, State and Federal Governments and the local Mayor.

Will this task force and Minister Roxon buck the trend?
The early indications are not good.
Here’s why in pictures:

This graph is from the Age, Saturday, September 5, 2009.

Highlighted in yellow is a known fact about what’s needed in any effective Road Safety or Harm Minimisation Campaign:

Enforcement

The yellow sections highlight the importance of:

1. Setting an easily understood line in the sand. A figure that is easily publicised, measurable and readily enforced. In this case a maximum BAC of 05 for motorists.
2. A massive publicity campaign to educate the public, shame the offenders and positively reinforce the behaviour of the majority who choose to obey the law.
3. Effectively enforcing the limit. In this case via the introduction of Random Breath Testing, fines and worse.

From the task force’s report we have this statement:

It is clear that effective law enforcement is the key ingredient to ensure the efficacy of strategies that aim to alter drinking contexts as a way of preventing harmful consumption of alcohol.

From the BMA report we have this reinforcement:

Educational initiatives have been shown by the World Health Organisation to be the least effective approach to tackling alcohol-related harm and to be less powerful than regulation.

The reader of the graph can see, that the big plunges in road safety have been achieved by aiming fairly and squarely at the evil effects of Big Liquor, and beating them.

The Task Force has failed to recognise and recommend a maximum pedestrian BAC limit.

It has failed to offer any recommended, maximum safe BAC level for pedestrians.

Because of this lack of an enforcement edge, they need to take 15 to 20 years to have any sort of effect!

No wonder they need to set up another bureaucracy!

Check this next graph out.

The first line represent the percentage of Australian secondary students aged from 17 down to 12 years of age who are currently engage in Harmful Drinking. That’s right, down to 12 years of age!

To the Absolute Shame of our Federal, State and Local political leaders and our Big Liquor dependent Media, this number currently sits at over 30%!

Then we have the percentage of those students engaged in Short Term / High Risk drinking – 20%!

Finally we have the percentage of those students currently engaged in Long Term / High Risk drinking – 10.5%!

Would the latter per termed ‘Alcoholics’ in an earlier age?

Task Force Graph of Ministerial Failure

In 15 years, they want to drop ‘Harmful Drinking amongst 12-7 year olds’ from a staggering current rate of 31% to a disastrous 21%.

Does the Minister assume we can afford to wait this long?

Surely immediate, drastic and much more ambitious and effective action is needed now?

Young lives are on the line Minister!

The Task Force assumes that they’d be able to fund a media, education campaign for so long? Despite the overtures of Big Liquor, the vicissitudes of elections, changes of political leadership?

Is this a defendable, promotable target for a Federal Government Minister?

You have to be kidding.

How can our Media let them put this stuff out?

A 2 point drop over 15 years in the staggering percentage of under age alcoholics?

As a matter of the highest, life saving priority, Minister Roxon should be asking for a policy mix that delivers this or better:

What Minister Roxon should be asking for

What could achieve this?:

1. Setting a Pedestrian 08 limit;
2. Advertise, educate and promote it;
3. Enforce it via Random Breath Tests (RBT), fines and worse.
4. Setting a minimum age for Consumption of Alcohol to 21;
5. Advertise, educate and promote it;
6. Enforce it via RBT, fines and worse.
7. Ban All Liquor Advertising
8. Ban All Big Liquor Sponsorship
9. De-normalise liquor consumption via educating the media, sporting personalities and others of how damaging to youth and costly to the taxpayer their attitudes are. Media should never joke or make light references to any harmful or addictive drug including alcohol. This is stupid, irresponsible behaviour. Our media licences are our community’s property. There should be serious penalties for any breach of licence conditions and ‘Normalising’ drug use is prevalent and needs to end immediately. It should be a media licence ‘Condition’.
10. Formally classify companies engaged in the production and or sale of dangerous and addictive drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, as the key method of isolating them from all forms of promotion and marketing activities.
11. ‘Dangerous and addictive drug’ manufacturers or suppliers should be formally banned from contributing to any recognised lobbyist, media organisation, political party or politicians.
12. Be ready with deft follow up policies as Big Liquor react with alternative promotions and strategies.

Big Liquor companies need to be publicly registered as ‘Dangerous and addictive drug’ Suppliers.

Why?

Apart from being a simple and clear declaration of the truth, look at what they have achieved so far!

30% of 12 year olds dangerously drinking!

10% functioning as alcoholics!

This evil success can only be achieved via the corruption of the body politic, including Members of Parliament, Business and Academic institutions and our Media. ‘Corruption’ being to force actions not in the national or constituents interests – ostensibly, playing a role directly against what you’re being paid to do.

Removing Big Liquor from these fields is essential for the cause of harm minimisation.

Again, it is not prohibition. Big Liquor should be free to create and sell their harmful products, but only under the strictest conditions and with no suggestion of marketing or promotion.

The fact that our politicians allow Drink Promotions, in middle of the night at all night alcohol sessions – is beyond a joke or a disaster – it is a catastrophe tearing at the fabric of our society.

Where did the alcopops concept come from? Right minded, upstanding citizens?

Their ‘product’ is addictive, carcinogenic alcohol mixed with lolly water and aimed at defenceless young people, in order to get as many of them as addicted as quickly and as completely as possible.

Only evil people can think up and execute such an evil marketing strategy.

These people are evil.

What do you think?

Click on leave a response and fire away.

This is a given fact of life.

Increase the total tonnage of alcohol sold, then you get the increase in violence, illness and deaths.

The British Medical Association(BMA) has published ‘Under the influence. The damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people, September 2009′.  Click for it here… Goes to the causes of this problem. It is easy to read but depressing to digest.

In it, the BMA recount the history of total market dominance of Big Liquor, how politicians now feel they may have made the wrong decisions – after they took the money – now that the damage has been done – especially getting into bed with Big Liquor on ‘Joint Industry – Government’ campaigns, over there called DRINKWATCH (sound familiar Australia?), which the BMA describe as being a part of  Big Liquor’s ‘Stakeholder Marketing’ strategy – see ‘6.2 Marketing by any other name’, how the over supply of liquor outlets was achieved via disastrous deregulation that like Australia, led to almost everyone marketing the stuff.
A few key quotes for those too busy to read it all:

‘Educational initiatives have been shown by the World Health Organisation to be the least effective approach to tackling alcohol-related harm and to be less powerful than regulation. ‘

Industry based campaigns serve to protect industry vested interests by ‘avoiding dire health consequences’ and distract attention and energy from more effective… efforts’.

‘The liberalisation of licensing laws has also contributed to the excessively pro-alcohol social norms…’ Big Liquor designs and creates the pro-alcohol social norms you see defensively displayed by their young victims.

‘Stakeholder marketing by the alcohol industry, including partnership working and industry funded health education, has served the needs of the alcohol industry, not public health. In particular it has focussed attention on ineffective education initiatives and partial solutions, rather than evidence-based population level approaches.’

‘Twenty per cent of 11 to 13 year olds in England in 2006 were found to have been drunk in the last four weeks; with around a third (35%) getting drunk deliberately (Fuller 2007)’, and, ‘…young people are drinking twice as much now as they did in 1990.’

The analysis of Big Liquor marketing points to them deliberately targetting children via promotions and advertisements aimed at and hitting them via FACEBOOK and other social media, totally unregulated, and of the estimated total expenditure of GB£800m by Big Liquor in the UK, most of it is spent on ‘below the line’ activities. This is marketing speak for promoting the careers of friendly media hacks, politicians and political parties, promoting a brand awareness and a desire to partake through by large scale sporting promotions, internet and social media promotion and underage drink promotions in venues. Of the £800m only £200m was spent ‘above-the-line’.

Where does the Evil come in? Well, if I have to explain the morally bankrupt position of Big Liquor in their behaviours as described above, then maybe it’s too late for you?

Where does Fevola fit in? Check out the BMA’s report and see if you can pick the same tactics and practices typically used in the UK for their ‘Fevolas’.

More coming on this issue…

1. At Facebook via this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pedestrian-08-Campaign/141629358347
2. And here on site at: http://pedestrian08.org/about/supporter-registration-page/

Registering as a supporter on pedestrian dot org does not involve any public disclosure of your name, email or other identification features.

Please email both links to as many people you suspect will be interested in joining!

Mike Cockburn

The Pedestrian 08 Campaign

Proving again, what a massive success Victoria’s BAC 05 Campaign has become, Victoria Police BAC tested EVERY driver leaving the car parks of the MCG and found only two over the limit.

Over a four day period, Operation Ardent involved the random breath testing of 17,222 people of which only 52! failed this alcohol drug test.

Drivers blowing greater than 05 are not permitted to continue driving, and it is a common sight to see cars randomly parked on the sides of Freeways where ‘Booze Buses’ and the good men and women of Victoria Police have been doing their duty…

Drivers are removed from danger and prevented from being dangerous.

What this all adds up to:

Lives saved, injuries prevented and a continuing cultural change process where everyone gets the message that drinking alcohol and driving don’t go together.

Billions of dollars are saved.

Prison beds are freed up to help keep hardened criminals in for longer, by not wasting them on idiots without the commonsense to not drink and drive.

So Mass Education giving clearly understandable limits – given backbone by random breath tests – in accordance with easily enforceable laws. This gives us change you can believe in…

We need to follow this example in how we deal with pedestrian alcohol use, specifically binge drinking alcohol users and their propensity for alcohol related violence, accident and injury.

Wishy washy education only campaigns cannot compete…

David is across what is needed:

The implementation did not mean that police had to be on every street.
They worked and reworked the hot spots and look what has been achieved.
The key point being that RBT turned a policy, specifically a message, into one that was effective.
By setting a limit, promoting it, then efficiently enforcing it…

This kind of understanding seems to elude the Australian Football League (AFL) and the AFL Players Association’s Pippa Grange who is against any ‘draconian measures‘ being put in place to reinforce their education and consulting campaign. See this article from the Melbourne Age here.

For some historical perspective, read this demonstrating not much in the way of progress. Or this giving an overall community wide effects statement.

All this when we have had a football related, alcohol related, alleged one punch homicide at an end of season celebration down at East Geelong. Funeral coverage for Nathan Alsop here.

Which is in the neigbourhood of the heart of the Just Think Campaign, which like most of these programs lacks a consequence for those engaged in acts of binge drinking, known to lead to alcohol related violence, and relies on drunken brains to just somehow think.

And we have extra nasty publicity given to one leading footballer drunk at The annual AFL football awards The Brownlows here.

And with the State of Victoria battling with a background of anti-Indian violence, another player has been allegedly involved in an assault of an Indian taxi driver, endangering not just life and limb, but a multi-billion dollar export industry.

So, where are the headlines ‘Footballer loses career over alcohol related incident’?

How about ‘AFL removes Footballer from Team List’?

Or, ‘Football club institutes Max 08 BAC on pain of contract suspension-Players Association Agrees’.

Begging the question of how many headlines would we then have that look like this:

10 minutes of headline hunting