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New Zealand looks unlikely to follow tough new Australian guidelines aimed at curbing "binge drinking".
Associate Health Minister Damien O'Connor said last night that the Government was not looking at changing its guidelines that men should not drink more than six standard drinks or women more than four in a single session.
The head of Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council, Professor Jon Currie, told Australian media at the weekend that the council planned a new "top limit" for men of four standard drinks.
The new guidelines tie in with a A$53 million ($66 million) Rudd Government strategy to tackle binge drinking, including a 70 per cent tax hike on ready-to-drink mixed drinks.
Australia and New Zealand have high rates of binge drinking, especially among young people. Auckland University Professor Ross McCormick said about 15 per cent of people in both countries drank at rates above the guidelines.
Until now, Australia has had a graduated set of guidelines which said men could safely consume four standard drinks and women two, with the risk then rising to "high risk" at 11 drinks for men and seven for women.
The first draft of the new guidelines, published last October, proposed scrapping the graduated scale and adopting a single "low-risk" guideline for both men and women of just two standard drinks a day.
Professor Currie told the Melbourne Age that the final version, to be published next month, would keep the two-drink "low-risk" limit, but set an absolute "top limit" of four standard drinks at a sitting for men.
The new "top limit" for women has not been reported but is presumed to be two standard drinks.
A "standard drink" is defined as containing 10 grams of alcohol. In New Zealand this is roughly equivalent to a 330ml can of DB Export Gold, a 100ml glass of most kinds of wine or a 275ml bottle of ready-to-drink Vodka Cruiser.
Adopting the rumoured Australian guidelines would mean cutting the recommended maximum for men from six cans to four cans of Export Gold, or from six to four glasses of wine.
For women it would mean halving the recommended maximum from four glasses of wine to two, or from four bottles of Vodka Cruiser to two.
Professor McCormick said the "low-risk" maximum of two standard drinks a day proposed in Australia was based on international findings that an average of three or more standard drinks a day over a lifetime increased the risk of death from an alcohol-related disease by more than 1 per cent.
The risk increased for more drinks up to a 6 and 10 per cent above-average risk of death from alcohol-related diseases for men and women drinking 10 standard drinks a day.
But Mr O'Connor said New Zealand was already ahead of Australia in its "culture change" campaign against binge drinking and the current guidelines were not under review.
"I don't think it's helpful to set unrealistic levels of what is safe drinking or binge drinking, given the reality of consumption by many people in both Australia and New Zealand," he said.
The minister said the Government also had no plans to copy Australia's tax hike on ready-to-drink mixes.
"International evidence shows that younger people just shift to another kind of drink [if taxes on one kind of drink are raised]," he said.
"The only sustainable way of making progress is to raise awareness through the culture change programme and highlight the harm from alcohol, such as the advertisements that we have started running on TV."
