John Roughan: Death will change habits

16 year old James Webster who died after drinking a whole bottle of Vodka. Photo / Supplied

It can be little comfort to the parents of James Webster that his death will have registered deeply in many young minds. But I bet it has.

Until this week kids didn't know - they might have been told but they really didn't know - that drinking can kill you. Not just indirectly by driving drunk or drinking too much over a lifetime, but immediately. Overnight.

I didn't really know. Doubtless there have been countless references in public health publications over the years to what can happen if a sudden large dose of alcohol is not rejected by the stomach, but none of them stuck.

They would have carefully explained that blood carries the drug to the brain and central nervous system which can become depressed to the point of unconsciousness, even death.

When I read "even death" tacked on to health warnings, I seldom believe it. It sounds like improbable killjoy propaganda, until it happens.

Nobody this week could tell us for certain what the 16-year-old schoolboy did last Saturday night when he took a bottle of vodka to a party and never woke up on Sunday morning, but anyone around his age can probably imagine it vividly.

They know how they drink, particularly when they haven't drunk much alcohol before. They're liable to drink it like lemonade and crack on as though they're enjoying it.

Liquor manufacturers have helpfully produced concoctions of highly sweetened spirits to get them used to it.

At the boy's funeral on Thursday the headmaster of King's College, Bradley Fenner, said, "The sad thing is this will probably be the best educational experience they can have." He was referring to the students, not the manufacturers.

This lesson doesn't need adults to rub it in, and it is better that they don't. The news this week spoke more effectively than any public health campaign and may have a greater impact than would any of the remedies recently proposed by the Law Commission in its monumental report on the nation's drinking habits.

Helen Clark asked the Law Commission to study the results of 20 years of liberal legislation after the shooting of a South Auckland liquor store attendant, Navtej Singh, in an armed robbery two years ago.

It was a curious response to a crime, for which Anitelia Chan Kee received a life sentence last week, and the hesitation of police at the scene was criticised by their conduct authority yesterday.

But the law review was really a surrender to sustained criticism of the lowering of the drinking age to 18 and the proliferation of liquor outlets.

The head of the commission, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, has been a reluctant convert to a return to restrictions. A second look at its report this week has not converted me.

Liberal trading laws have made a vast improvement to our drinking culture, mainly by vastly improving wine. The commission acknowledges that but the contribution that deregulation has made to the popularising of wine needs to be emphasised.

When liquor stores opened in every shopping centre and beer appeared in dairies, and supermarkets could put stacks of discounted alcohol at their entrance, specialised wine shops had to lift their game.

They couldn't beat the bulk traders on price so they had to sell value. They made it their business to stock better wine than supermarkets at reasonable cost. You don't have to pay ridiculous sums to get a drinkable red any more.

I sometimes take an evening walk. In the living rooms of many a house I pass there are one or two people having a quiet glass. It looks routine for them. The men don't look the type who might otherwise be drinking their way through a six-pack of beer at home, or a half-gallon jar going back a bit.

I know those beer drinkers still exist and when you add wine you would expect our national liquor consumption to have increased. But it is not all bad. It is mostly good. Wine has brought women to the party. The blokey beer culture that used to exclude them survives mainly in self-mockery as advertisements for relic brands.

It is the young who have discredited liberal liquor laws. Young men and women, sometimes younger than the legal purchasing age, who go out with the objective of getting very drunk very fast.

They live in a culture that nobody older than 20 understands. A teenage musical generation lasts about five years, a clothing fashion much less. Not so long ago their drinking culture was putting elders to shame by adhering to a sober driver roster.

Their current habits will change when a generation decides wasted people are really boring, especially when they want to tell you about it.

That change might happen quickly now. Chances are, next time they start sculling spirits someone will recall the guy who died.