Manukau Alcohol Rally Speech – Professor Doug Sellman – 15/8/2010

Talofa lava, malo e lelei, tena koutou katoa

We are all here today because we are deeply concerned about the state of alcohol in New Zealand, and we are calling on the Government to enact significant alcohol reform.

New Zealand has a damaging heavy drinking culture involving 700,000 heavy drinking citizens, the vast majority of whom are adults not young people. In fact only 8% of heavy drinkers in New Zealand are under the age of 20.

One of the major drivers of the heavy drinking culture identified by the Law Commission is the “unbridled commercialisation of alcohol”.

The alcohol industry, which of course includes the supermarkets and advertising industry, currently has enormous freedom to push alcohol at the NZ population, young and old. This legal drug pushing is causing billions of dollars of health and social harm and ordinary taxpayers are picking up the tab. The alcohol industry is enriching itself, while the effects of alcohol are damaging the country.

We have just had the most comprehensive review of the evidence about alcohol in our nation’s history. The Law Commission has spoken and we are all now waiting for the Government to respond.

Is the Government going to respond in ways that will make a real difference? Or are they going to simply tinker with the problem, and at the same time try and pretend they are doing something tough and bold using PR spin to sell it to the public?

Over the past 12 months, Alcohol Action has been promoting a 5+ Solution based on the best international scientific evidence. Today we are announcing four key specific measures that highlight this broad strategy. These are four key measures that would really work to reduce New Zealand’s heavy drinking culture, and they are based on World Health Organisation sponsored science, not PR spin.

These four measures will act as a useful gauge of how serious the Government is about New Zealand’s heavy drinking culture. If their response in two or three weeks time does not include these things we will know they are only prepared to tinker with the problem of heavy drinking despite what their rhetoric sounds like.

The four measures are: 1. ban legal drunk driving by reducing the blood alcohol concentration down to 0.05 immediately 2. ban broadcast advertising and alcohol sponsorship of sport and cultural events 3. ban alcohol sales from dairies and supermarkets 4. put an end to severely discounted alcohol by introducing a minimum price of $2 per standard drink of alcohol Like the Government, we too “are not in the business of getting in the way of people’s ability to enjoy a drink or two”. In fact most of us do enjoy a drink or two and will continue unaffected by these four measures.

However, the alcohol industry, which of course includes the supermarkets and the advertising industry, will fight to the death on these four measures because these four measures will have a significant influence on heavy drinkers and therefore their profits. This is the crux of the issue. The majority of the industry’s profit comes from heavy drinking, and mainly the heavy drinking of adults.

If the Government’s recent performance on drink-driving is anything to go by the signs are not good. They appear to be framing the heavy drinking culture as a youth problem and they are calling for “more research” to delay measures that would actually make a significant difference.

Tragically this National-led government could be on the brink of wasting a golden historic opportunity. The National Party itself could very well become branded by the Government’s upcoming response on alcohol as blinded by its ideology and under the thumb of the alcohol industry.

But the landscape changes we’ve seen in New Zealand to the tobacco industry and the smoking culture are now on their way for the alcohol industry and the heavy drinking culture.

This alcohol campaign is just beginning. It is us, a gathering storm of ordinary New Zealanders; and it will go on until the 5+ Solution, including these four specific measures announced today, are fully enacted.

No reira, tena koutou tena koutou kia ora tatou katoa

ENDS

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