Is this really the answer to everything?

So on the TV the other night is an UK based expert on the problems associated with Alcohol, who was here at the behest of some interest group or other presumably the anit Alcohol lobby as his message in a nutshell was to "ban alcohol" His views on the matter prehaps best tipified by the comment "if alcohol was invented today we would ban it"

Indeed "lets ban it" a message likely to be very well received here in NZ as this seems to be our standard response to anything we see as a problem and if we are not going to ban it outright we need to regulate it into oblivion.

But does this work? Has it ever worked? and do we stop to work through the consequences based on research not emotion?

While not something banned but something regulated cycle helmets are a fantastic example where there is no reliable data on the effectivness of these helmets in preventing injury. There is evidence that the number of fatalities increase amoung helmet wearing cyclists and the stat that I like the most on this subject is you are more likely to suffer a head injury walking and yet no one is suggesting helmets for walkers. Another negative statistic is that helmets are shown to decrease cycle participation.

But I digress back to Alcohol we have a fantastic experiment in the form of the American Prohibition period between 1920 to 1933 when Alcohol was in fact widely banned in America and to varying degrees they did try and enforce the ban. Clearly it didn't work but it did turn otherwise law abiding citizens into potential criminals and gave criminal gangs a fantastic source of revenue which they were prepared to defend with violence.

Sound familiar, sounds a lot like the current "war on drugs" that America and varioius other countries including our own is currently involved in. The sad facts are people are still doing, the gangs make money out of it and in the case of harder drugs a lot of suffering results not from the drug taking itself but the surrounding activities. Pharmacy grade cocaine is cheap (it is used in some medical situations) for example but not if you have to get it off your local gang member and it may not be of the same quality standard.

So none of the above is an argument in favour of drug taking or binge drinking (the current manifestation of our drinking culture) both can be very harmful to your health, relationships with others chances of employment etc, etc. However how does increasing restriction or outright prohibition help curb the problems, so far there is zero evidence that this is working so far.

With booze the often quoted solution is to increase the price, however as I understand it the price of P (methamphetamine) is very expensive (I am not a user so stand to be corrected) but it doesn't seem to put people off. Not only that but we now have the example of "pre loading" where young people will buy cheaper supermarket booze and get hammered at home before heading out for the night. I think in economics this would be called substitution, if the price of drinks in bars was more reasonable however prehaps a more controlled approach might be taken. After all you can't take your bottle with you to the pub unless it is inside you which is what happens after all. So sometimes the "solutions" make things worse.

In the exact same arena we have an example of a system that does seem to work. Once upon a time not so long ago no one thought anything about driving drunk and it is still possible at the squash club for example for older members to talk about when xyz got hammered and end up in a ditch and the yarn is told as an item of humor not warning. These same clubs where these stories are told will also tell you that bar takings now are "way down" as "no one wants to drink and drive"

So how did this happen? Education of course, we were all taught that drink driving was not funny and that it was socially unacceptable. "if you drink and drive you are a bloody idiot" went one advert. and over time it has worked. OK police will point to greater enforcement as a factor although the evidence of penalty as a deterent to behaviour is weak as a general rule but as social animals we are driven to conform to the social norms. Change the norms get a result.

Far from banning alcohol make it unacceptable to be drunk.

You will notice that the "ban it" logic is already creeping into the food debate because some people (actually quite a few) are fat. "lets tax fat" they cry, sigh some people are slow learners is all I can say.