KEY POINTS:
"If alcohol were invented today," said an internationally renowned physician a few years ago, "it would be available only on prescription, and then only from hospital pharmacies."
But, he added, alcohol remained the safest, most readily available and cheapest tranquilliser known to mankind.
And therein lies the enigma of alcohol: on the one hand the cup that cheers and relaxes, the almost indispensable lubricant for social intercourse (and often sexual intercourse, too), and on the other a mind-altering chemical, a brain poison and a highly addictive drug, the abuse of which is said to cost this tiny country billions of dollars a year.
It's a peculiar thing, alcohol, and more peculiar still is our attitude to it. It seems always to have had a mystique about it, an aura, and it is neither coincidental nor insignificant that it is known as a spirit.
In my childhood, drinking alcohol was something adults did and it would never have occurred to my parents to share with me a glass of wine or beer, let alone spirits.
Some churches proscribed it absolutely and others taught that it should be taken only in moderation. There were temperance societies striving for prohibition, and large areas were kept dry by triennial licensing polls.
You had to be 21 to be legally on licensed premises, which in those days were hotels and taverns (licensed restaurants, cafes, bars, sports grounds and so on were still decades away) and there were quaint laws about having liquor near dance halls.
The pubs shut at 6pm (except in some areas where after-hours trade was carried on with the tacit consent of the local constabulary) and you couldn't get a drink on a Sunday for love nor money.
If we had even hinted to our parents or teachers that we might like to have a drink or two at a party at home or a school ball, for instance, the very idea would have been met with astonishment. All our experiments with alcohol were, therefore, surreptitious.
Excessive drinking, particularly among young people, has always been with us, but as outlets have proliferated and the legal drinking age has been progressively lowered, the problem has become exponentially greater, to the extent that it is approaching a national calamity.
This week's "NZ's drinking problem" series by the astute Simon Collins is timely, but it would have been just as timely at any point since the new millennium arrived.
When the National Government lowered the drinking age to 18 in 1999, I wrote that I hoped those who promoted it would be prepared to meet the social and economic costs that would surely follow.
And follow they have, to such an extent that the grim results of overindulgence, particularly among teens and preteens - crime, violence, motor accidents, drownings, property damage to name just a few - are rarely absent from the daily news.
Yet no government has been prepared to follow the lead of other governments around the world which have faced the same dilemma and made sensible moves, such as returning the legal age to 21 and, in France, closing tens of thousands of outlets.
Nor have they been game to increase the tax on alcohol to any worthwhile extent. In fact, since I pay more than $100 for a carton of 200 cigarettes, I don't see why a bottle of whisky, gin, brandy, rum or whatever shouldn't be at least the same price, considering its potential to do far greater harm.
I really don't care who drinks or how much, but why is it that this dangerous substance, even more lethal than tobacco, can still be advertised when tobacco advertising has been proscribed for years? There is supposed to be some self-regulation about the advertising of booze, but it surely is a sham.
Some of that advertising is utterly reprehensible, inhumanly aimed as it is at young men who want to be seen as macho and at young women who want to be seen as sexy. Advertising of alcoholic beverages should be banned altogether.
That should include billboards and all the point-of-sale stuff plastered all over hotels, taverns, bottle stores, restaurants, cafes and sports clubs; and a total proscription on the sponsorship of sporting events by the peddlers of alcohol.
And why are the products of the booze barons not required to carry warning labels on the bottles as cigarette packets have been required to do for years?
Such as: Alcohol can kill. Alcohol can cause you to stop breathing. Alcohol can stop your heart. Alcohol can rot your brain. Alcohol can destroy your liver. Alcohol during pregnancy can damage your baby. Alcohol can make you vulnerable to predators. Alcohol causes road accidents. Alcohol can drive you to suicide. All complete with nauseating illustrations.
Isn't it about time we got really serious about the depredations of booze?
