I don’t really drink much. I think I kinda get drunk maybe once a year, I don’t really drink wine with dinner and I’d say I have maybe a beer or a cider or a Gin and Tonic once a week, and when I say one, I really mean it. I sip and can sit on a glass for most of an evening.
Booze has just never really been my thing. I blacked out once when I was 16 from a night of drinking and that was enough for me to never want that experience again so maybe I’m not the best person to ask in terms of alcohol law because I think most of the bloody country are full blown alcoholics.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy a cold one after a long day or begrudge anyone else the pleasure, but as a nation, we have a real problem with booze and it seems to me that we are in a culture of denial about its harm, its influence and the need to really restrict its social damage.
The free market liberalisation of booze has tuned into one of this country’s greatest health disasters and the pockets of the booze barons are deep enough to bribe the National Party to always water down any legislation aimed at curbing their ability to sell everywhere at all times.
We need far tougher laws on advertising, sponsorship and availability yet what is being currently proposed in Auckland just doesn’t seem to go far enough.
Look at the manufactured outcry the booze industry are trying to ferment over the very basic suggestion that supermarkets and bottle stores stop selling booze at 9pm and open at 9am instead of 7am.
Stopping the sale of booze at Supermarkets and bottle stores at 9pm IS THE EXACT sort of tactic we should be looking at. How else should we deal to the drunken carnage we already see on our streets? Allowing people to purchase more and more booze as the night progresses only exacerbates the social damage, it doesn’t make it manageable.
Likewise the 9am start. Personally I can’t see any valid reason why booze should be allowed to be purchased at 7am, 8am or 9am. If I had my way they wouldn’t be allowed to sell alcohol at Supermarkets or bottle stores until midday. Who the hell needs to buy booze at 9am in the bloody morning?
Clearly someone who is a full blown addict.
If you are buying booze at 9am in the morning, you have a problem.
I don’t care about consumer rights, I don’t care about educating people to drink better because we are a nation of closet alcoholics who are in denial about its impact. Booze is a restricted substance for a very good reason and the sooner we dump this consumer rights bullshit and start pushing back against the bribed political influence booze barons have bought for themselves, the better for NZ society.
The right to buy booze whenever, is a God-given right, according to neo-liberals and Individualists…
It’s just a shame they ignore the Responsibility side to consuming it.
Frank, many of the political left will disagree with your blanket definition.
I disagree with blanket bans regulations etc that can infringe upon the the responsible citizen consumer of alcohol in an effort to protect the irresponsible consumer from – let’s admit it – to a large extent, from themselves.
We have licence systems for other areas in life where responsibility is required such as firearms and driving. As a compromise perhaps it might be feasible to introduce a liquor purchasing licence which requires an exam or course to be attended before qualifying for it and which can be forfeited for any social or legal infringement that has alcohol or intoxication associated with it.
That already exists, Richard. It’s called a “Manager’s License”. You have to sit a test for it.
When you next go onto licensed premises, look out for the “Duty Manager” sign – s/he sat the Manager’s License test to obtain the certificate.
Been there, done that, in my younger years. Also witnessed first hand people “enjoying their right” to be shit-faced on liquor.
Generally speaking, Polite Society have little idea what goes on in their own cities, at night…
Neo-liberals and individuals don’t ignore the responsibility side of it at all, it is you leftist that don’t advocate personal responsibility for every activity instead making every one responsible for the actions of the individual.
It is you that want restrictions to combat alcoholism so we all suffer instead of punishing the individual should they consume to excess and cause mayhem.
If you leftist believe so strongly in individual responsibility why are you so strongly in favor of the collective? It amazes me how many leftist I meet who believe so strongly in the collective but themselves contribute very little towards it. I suppose extreme leftist believe in the collective as deep down they know that they ride off the back of society expecting every one else to contribute to provide them with welfare and all other sorts of state benefits.
Pffft – for all your ‘personal responsibility’ crap – where the hell is the corporate responsibility? Why aren’t booze barons held accountable for the impact their products have on society? Restricting booze sales till midday and then closing at 9pm will stop the easy access those with severe booze problems indulge in.
It is our personal responsibility to ensure the booze barons don’t buy enough influence with your National Party mates to damage our communities.
Restricting booze sales till midday and then closing at 9pm will stop the easy access those with severe booze problems indulge in.
I doubt it will interrupt many hard core alcoholics one little bit. They are like junkies, because the whole universe revolves around the next drink or fix they will be prepared and will ensure an uninterrupted supply.
Granted that you might inconvenience legitimate shoppers and/or a percentage of binge drinkers on an all night bender.
Wouldn’t inconvenience me at all, Richard. I do my grocery shopping at normal hours and hardly ever in the mornings or late at night.
So it is all about you, how selfish! What about shift workers who might just be finishing a nights work and want to do some grocery shopping and buy a bottle of wine with it?
Shift workers who finish a night’s shift generally head home to crash, instead of doing groceries. I should know; I did enough of it in my younger days.
Take your blinkers off and think it through. We don’t all have booze on our minds, 24/7.
no, that isn’t true I was and will be again a shift worker and we often do our shopping early morn or late at night or else it does not get done…
@ STEPHEN @ Richard Christie . Neither of you have one small idea of what your talking about . You’re a pair of poorly informed idiot jonky quislings and a bit embarrassing if I have to be honest . Certainly here . In this most excellent Blog . Here , you’re like a pair of old The Warehouse slippers in the window display at Jimmy Choo’s .
Drugs are fun . Seriously . Good albeit illegal recreational drugs are a blast . Booze , the only legal high is just awful . It makes you physically and mentally sick , is dangerously cheap and your kids can see the pretty labels right beside the yogurts and cheeses . Worst of all ? It’s just a bit boring and yet has an unhingingy seductive quality about it in that the more you drink , the more you can drink . It’s like a really dumb lover but with great legs and arse .
Yankee doodle jonky-stien knows well the soporific effects of the piss . The most addictive element of booze is its ability to briefly allay anxiety , and if you’re a member of this shitty society , you will know anxiety .
The rip shit and bust approach by the neo liberals to feather their own nests before the arse falls out of everything can only best be done while we , the people, are pissed and asleep in front of The X Factor . Stay at home , get pissed , watch TV , keep your mouths shut . Do as you’re told . It’s working for Dick and Steve , they’re thick as clay .
Barry Crump once said ” There’s no such thing as dangerous drugs , just dangerous drug users . “
of course the obvious answer –
– is nationalise the bastards..
..nationalise the sin industries..
..and legalise/regulate/tax the least harmful of all the intoxicants – cannabis..
..then you will see booze consumption/drunkeness/violence decrease..
..as has been shown/proven in colorado…
For booze to be responsible will require that all the harmful impacts be included in the price. That includes health, loss of productive work time, family violence, vandalism, police and courts time, alcohol related traffic crashes, etc.
Yes, it will put part of these costs unfairly on those of us who do drink moderately. As it is all of us are forced to share in the expenses whether we drink or not.
I certainly wouldn’t suffer from tighter restrictions on alcohol and I doubt if any other responsible person would either. Being responsible I find that I’m quite capable of planning to have the drinks available when I want them.
It is, as a matter of fact, the demands of the neo-liberals and the conservatives for the removal of restrictions that promotes irresponsibility. Irresponsible people don’t plan – they just go and buy the booze on impulse and then whinge that the booze store isn’t open when they have that impulse. Of course, it’s that impulse buying that truly drives the profits of the Booze Barons and that would be why they want to promote ever more irresponsibility.
Thinking about how there have been several lawsuits against tobacco companies in the US by individuals: wouldn’t it be interesting if someone tried to do that here – to alcoholic drinks manufacturers. New Zealanders would quickly realize just how much economic and political power is held by the liquor industry, and who their supporters are. My fervent wish is for New Zealand to reclaim its sovereignty from the liquor and gaming industries but sadly I don’t think that will ever happen. It sure won’t happen with the current administration.
” Why does anyone need to buy booze at 9am? ”
If you wake up sober and watch TV One’s ‘ Breakfast Show ‘ ?
Dont imposse your moralist religious views on others.
If I want to drink at 9 am is not your bussiness. Why should I have to buy a bottle of alcohol and keep it at home just because of your religious moralist views?
Anyway I will buy 2 bottles of alcohol at 7 pm and no problem. How does it change how drunk I will get?
Cough, cough. I’m not religious, I simply accept that booze is an addictive poison that causes vast social damage that the booze barons never pay the cost for.
Mike, if you don’t care for the rights of community to control the problem of widespread alcohol abuse – then why should we care about your individual rights?
You’re suggesting that your rights trump that of the community and I find that untenable – specially because the rest of us pay (one way or another) for the consequences of alcohol abuse.
Except it will do nothing to curb problem drinking. Alcoholics will simply stock twice as much booze “just in case” and then go ahead and drink twice as much as they normally would in the same amount of time.
The only way to deal with alcoholism is to outlaw people from drinking who have shown they can’t handle it.
re..” Why does anyone need to buy booze at 9am? ”
..you have clearly never had a strong/serious relationship –
– with ‘sweet cousin cocaine’..
..in yrs/times past i can recall many occaisons having almost a medical-need for a bottle of champagne to neck at such hours – or earlier…
..to take off the edge/blur the lines – from a nite(s) of excess..
Not everyone abuses alcohol. In fact, you have not even considered what if one works night shift. It may not be practical to purchase at other times. Although, I am not saying this is a good idea in general.
Wow, Martyn, I have so many issues with your statements. Your ‘opinion’ appears to be exceedingly radical, irrational, uninformed, intolerant and frankly speaking… too ignorant to be taken seriously. I would advise you to do some research on the issue of substance abuse and the best ways to fight it.
There are plenty of recommendations issued by the World Health Organization, the medical community and other competent organizations who, I truly believe, are much better suited to offer an opinion on this matter than yourself. Actually, from what I´ve gathered, none of them would agree with your point of view.
As for me, I will trust the scientific community and people with proven experience fighting substance abuse, a million times more than your short sighted and uninformed opinion.
Mijail – your post reads like a self-parody.
Mijail, I have done exactly what you suggest. Post-graduate level, even. Everything Martyn says is accurate, true, correct, and a good way to reduce the harm caused by excessive consumption. Have you ever read the recommendations you mentioned? Apparently not. Neither has our beloved Minister of Justice, who has 175 years of evidence of the harm alcohol causes, but thinks she needs more – presumably to support the booze barons.
You managed to say absolutely nothing with all of those words.
Treating the symptom not the disease. Has the prohibition on drugs worked? No, it just fuels the industry. Will a prohibition or limits on alcohol work? Never. Only when we change the type of human being we are shaped into will these issues be addressed. Wowser moralism will not achieve this. Ask any recovering addict or alcoholic.
Sorry, Harry, but that is not strictly true. If you increase the availability of alcohol and make it cheap enough, then it’s hardly surprising that it’s prevalence increases.
You cannot stop people buying alcohol, but you can make it harder and thereby discourage it to a point. Price, location of shops, opening hours and so on can all be tools. Single cans or bottles should not be able to be sold. You do need to consider the shift worker too, who buys their groceries by necessity at 9am and wants to put a couple of bottles of wine in the trolley. I cannot work out why these poxy little shit box booze shops exist. So for once Martyn, we totally agree.
In our culture, yes. But interestingly, in China there is effectively no minimum age for alcohol sales. You can send your 8 year old kid down to the corner dairy (just about any food store also sells booze in China) and if they have the money they will be served. But I have never seen the kind of public drunkenness in large Chinese cities like you do in any sizeable New Zealand town. I don’t know why this is, I am only reporting what I have seen, but it does raise very good questions about how this kind of situation has arisen, who is responsible for it and how it can be addressed.
The booze problem raises its ugly head again. I remember when I was a barman in the pub we opened at 9am. There was always three or four waiting at the door. The pub closed at 6pm. By then a few drunks were thrown out especially on pay days and Saturdays. There was also the occasional brawl before closing time. Then a few Beer Baron Whanau owned the pubs and liquor outlets. They were licenses to print money but they were at least well taxed. The introduction to 10 o’clock closing only shifted the booze problem from six to ten. The problem won’t go away regardless of regulation but at least the number of outlets should be restricted in number. But then that will result in suburban monopolies and more licenses to print money.
Looking at all the comments here it is obvious that NZ really does have a drink problem but wont admit it. This is a left wing web site, so it is quite easy to guess what comments will gather mainly positive votes (Left wing). Very few comments here are drawing strongly positive votes and some comments that are almost undisputable are struggly to get a positive vote at all.
Conclusion: supporters of this blog who support left wing comments for most topics find it hard to adopt a left wing view, when the topic is drink. Interesting.
I’m a night shift worker, if I want to have a beer after work why shouldn’t I be able to?
I’m already disadvantaged enough that I can’t shop at normal hours.
Why can’t you shop at normal hours? I’m sorry, that makes no sense, unless you’re working 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
Night shifts are usually 3pm-11pm, and “grave yard” shifts are 11pm-7am. Even if you work 11pm-11am, there’s nothing to stop you engaging in other activities.
What I suspect is your actual agenda is using shift-work as a pretext for liberalised trading hours. You may or may not work shifts, but your real point is to use this type of work to push an ideology of individual rights over community needs.
I’ve heard it all before, and if there is any “selfishness”, it comes from those who want unfettered access to a dangerous drug, at the expense of the community.
You assume that shift workers don’t have other things to do. I worked with shift workers on both shifts. Many have childcare responsibilities which are shared with the other parent who works during the day, so their freedom is curtailed somewhat. Also, at some stage they need to get a few hours sleep. In my view the biggest problem they have is getting enough sleep around their other responsibilities and then going in to work on machinery, while sleep deprived. I actually don’t agree with liberal hours for alcohol sales, but you should understand the complex problems that shift workers deal with before dismissing them as irrelevant.
I assume nothing exccept that the issue of so-called “shift workers” seems a common excuse by some Libertarians/right-wingers/alcohol lobbyists to promote liquor availability.
It seems there is always some excuse why society cannot reign in cheap, easily available, booze. “Shift work” is just one.
If it is that difficult to do your groceries because of your shift work (are you working 7 days a week?), then I would suggest that buying booze is the least of your worries.
FRANK;
Well said.
Cheers.
Shift workers coming home from work? Why should they have to wait until the time that everyone else wants to buy beer?
Why should your ‘right’ to buy booze at 9am trump societies right to protect alcoholics from booze baron profit margins?
You not protecting those who are living with alcohol addiction, by changing the time they can buy boozes, that is kind of the point. You just making them wait an extra hour or so. Also alot of the time people have a problematic relationship with alcohol they are not alcoholics by definition. Really we need to be fighting for more funding to go into public addiction centres and battling and trying to understand as a society why people are drinking so heavily.
CHLOE;
They are programmed by the CorpMedia by sport,sitcoms,
soaps,violent crime drama’s,etc etc etc.Hollywood same.
‘The powers that be’ use alcohol,drugs inflicted on to
society to maximize profit.
There are many ways,just think for a moment.
Chaos reigns with the ultimate breakdown of society.
‘Their’ goal off course.
aren’t you talking apples and oranges..?
..i am all for ‘soaking’ the booze-barons – (i want to nationalise the bastards..)
..but i had my alcohol-issues between the ages of 14-18..
..when i was a serious/heavy drinker..(pot ‘saved’ me from that particular demon..)
..and the beginning of this was during 6pm closing..
..and a 21 yrs old legal drinking age..
..and that never stopped me/us..
..so i fail to see how a couple of hours unable to buy booze will make a whit of difference..
..from my/that experience – i see restricting access for a few hours..
.. as just fiddling at the edges of this serious social-issue..
..and if not getting my nationalisation-wish –
– i wd recommend the quadruple-whammy of a steep rise in the tax on alcohol..
.the replacing of sports-sponsorship/advertising of it –
– with ad-campaigns warning of the dangers..
..plus plain-packaging/health-warnings on the product..
..(and as noted above) the legalisation/regulation/taxation of the intoxicant that causes the least harm..
..cannabis..
..that proven serious drop in consumption/assaults/crime in general in colorado –
..only emphasises the efficacy of that approach..
I think we need to put more restrictions around advertising and alcohol, and sure we can prevent supermarkets from selling boozes at 9am, but the issue here is his will not target the root cause of addiction. It is just a band-aid. What we need is more funding to go towards places like cads, the phoenix foundation and other public addiction centres that teach harm reduction, skills to deal with addiction and support those wishing to undergo complete adstinence.
I think when you said you did not drink much @martyn, it means you do not have much lived experience with addiction (unless you have supported someone with addiction, who is close to you, over an extended period of time) therefore maybe you think shutting down the advertisers of alcohol and changing the time when boozes is sold might do something. But as someone who has lived with addiciton issues for a while now (although in the last year I have managed to really decrease my drinking), you could change what time I can buy boozes and you could hit the booze advertising hard, but it would not change much. I’d still find ways of getting drunk if I wanted to.
I don’t drink because of how readily avaliable alcohol is, I drink to numb shit I don’t want to deal with. Among other reasons, like I am a survivor of sexual assault which means I am 70% more likly to suffer from issues with drugs and alcohol. We need to look at why people are drinking, put more money and resources ino our public addiction centres and also start campaigns that really aim to fight the stigma around addiction, so people feel safe to speak out.
Comments are closed.