KEY POINTS:
A new "zero-tolerance" law for young drink-drivers on restricted licences may have the perverse effect of making a full driver's licence a "licence to drink and drive", experts say.
The new law, part of a package of tighter controls on youth drinking announced yesterday, will slash the alcohol limit for drivers under 20 without a full licence from 30mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to zero.
Justice Minister Mark Burton said inexperienced drivers were "particularly at risk of alcohol-related crashes".
Drivers under 25 cannot get a full licence without at least two years' driving experience, because they have to wait six months to upgrade from a learner's to a restricted licence and a further 18 months to get a full licence.
But Alcohol Healthwatch, an agency funded by the Ministry of Health to reduce alcohol-related harm, said it was concerned that young people would still be able to drink and drive with up to 30mg/ml of alcohol in their blood once they got their full licences - potentially from the age of 17.
"It's almost like a licence to drink and drive - when you get a full licence you can drink," said the agency's director, Rebecca Williams.
Other alcohol experts also panned the Government package as "feeble" and "disappointing" and doubted that it would have much effect on teenage binge drinking.
Ministers promised a crackdown on youth drinking just before Parliament voted last November on a private member's bill from Hamilton West MP Martin Gallagher to raise the legal drinking age from 18 back to 20, the limit until 1999. The bill was lost the same day by 72-49.
The terms of reference for the review promised "tighter controls on sale and supply of liquor, both from licensed premises and from family, friends and others".
It is already illegal to sell alcohol to anyone under 18, or to buy it with the intention of supplying any of it to anyone under 18.
The final package will abolish a current defence which allows someone who supplied alcohol to someone under 18 to claim that they believed on reasonable grounds that the person was 18 or over.
The only defence will now be for suppliers to prove that they saw a passport, driver's licence or hotel industry 18-plus card showing that the young person was at least 18.
The proposals will also make it an offence for anyone other than a parent or guardian to supply alcohol to anyone under 18 who consumes it in a public place.
The current voluntary code on liquor advertising will be given teeth by creating an offence of failing to "cease and desist" when ordered by the industry-funded Advertising Standards Authority to pull an advertisement which breaches the code.
The Ministry of Health will also help to develop voluntary codes on alcohol sponsorship of sports and youth events.
But Massey University Professor Sally Casswell, a leading alcohol researcher, said the package was disappointing on both the marketing and supply fronts.
"What is suggested here is absolutely no change whatsoever in practical terms. I don't think we will be able to detect any difference as a result."
She said the "zero tolerance" law should be extended to everyone under 20, and the new offence of supplying alcohol to under-18-year-olds should extend to private parties as well as public places. "We know from what young people tell us that the bulk of alcohol consumed and heavy drinking is in their own homes and other people's homes at age 12 to 15. Outdoor public places are not important in the overall scheme of things."
Drug Foundation chief executive Ross Bell said the Government should raise taxes on alcohol, which were among the lowest of developed countries, and give local councils powers to control liquor outlets in the same way that they now control poker machines.
Professor Casswell said widely available and cheap alcohol, driven by the 1990s decision to allow liquor sales in supermarkets and dairies and supermarkets using alcohol as a loss-leader to entice customers, had reversed a previous decline in liquor sales driven by tougher drink-driving laws.
Sales of pure alcohol dropped from 11.3 litres a head in 1986 to a low of 8.7 litres in 1998 just before the drinking age was lowered, but have since risen to 9.4 litres.
