KEY POINTS:
One of New Zealand's leading addiction experts says alcohol is a more dangerous drug than the drug Fantasy, which has been classified as a high-risk class B drug.
Professor Doug Sellman, director of Otago University's National Addictions Centre, will tell an Australasian addictions conference in Auckland today that New Zealand's drug classification system is "an un-evidence-based mess".
"We're not saying that alcohol should be prohibited. We simply want its dangerousness better publicised," he said last night. "What the results of our analysis can contribute is a more objective perspective on alcohol, especially in relation to other recreational drugs."
Dr Sellman, a member of the expert advisory committee on drugs which was consulted when Fantasy was banned in 2001, said alcohol was more dangerous than Fantasy on the six-risk criteria which the committee applied.
It had a high ability to create dependence, a high likelihood of widespread use and abuse, a high risk of death and serious toxic effects to the brain and other bodily organs.
"Alcohol is well known to increase the risk of a number of cancers," he said. "The risk to the unborn child is also well known.
"We couldn't find any evidence of those things with GHB [Fantasy]."
He said society should require health warnings about risks such as fetal alcohol syndrome on every alcoholic product and stricter controls on alcohol advertising.
Another speaker at a policy forum on alcohol at the conference yesterday, Melbourne professor Robin Room, said the Government should require advertising about the dangers of alcohol at an equal level with all alcohol advertising in print and broadcast media. He said that when the US Federal Communications Commission imposed a similar policy for tobacco in the 1960s, it took only a few months for the tobacco industry to abandon the broadcast media and accept a voluntary advertising ban, which still exists.
In Sweden, the Government required health warnings equivalent to one-eighth of the size of all advertisements for alcohol in print media.
Massey University Professor Sally Casswell said the Government's proposed changes to advertising laws here would be ineffective because they would control only the content of alcohol advertising, not its volume.
"Younger people in New Zealand are being exposed to alcohol advertising at a higher level than in the US," she said. "All we can do is work for a reduction in exposure."
