Young lives drown in culture of binge

Celia Schoonraad says barmaids inevitably deal with intoxication. Photo / Chris Skelton

Alcohol is sapping the national spirit.

The abuse of booze is costing the country a fortune. Good men - and women - are turned into immoral drunks by the demon drink.

Public concern over alcohol abuse forces the New Zealand government to act.

Women behind the bar are banned, barmaids are made illegal, in the hope that this will staunch the flow of traffic to pubs.

This was 1910. New Zealand's struggles with alcohol are nothing new.

The ban on new barmaids lasted for more than 50 years, according to Paul Christoffel, who has just completed a PhD thesis on the history of alcohol restrictions in New Zealand. The ban wasn't complete, he says.

There was a grandmothering clause that allowed women working in 1910 to keep their jobs pulling pints.

"So by the time the ban was lifted in 1961, the only women working behind the bar were elderly," he says.

What seemed a sensible idea in 1910 simply wouldn't work today, says Celia Schoonraad.

She works at Auckland's Cassette bar on Vulcan Lane and, though only 24, has been working as a barmaid for seven years.

"Don't ask," she says of her early start in the business.

Social changes since 1910 have turned bar-rooms into equal-opportunity drinking and courting rooms, says Schoonraad.

Banning barmaids wouldn't turn back the clock and stop the heady cocktail of sex and booze.

"Let's say you had five bartenders, all men, and all really good-looking - girls would flock there, and guys will follow girls," she says.

Intoxicated patrons are unavoidable, as are the come-ons from men. But, bartenders like Schoonraad are more than capable of aggression in their responses.

"You're probably asking the wrong woman if this is a problem - I've got no problem telling someone to go f*** themselves."

People will always find a way to drink. "People drink for all sorts of reasons. Some drink to unwind, others for Dutch courage, while some people want to totally lose themselves."

It's those lost boozers, particularly younger ones, who are of most concern in 2009. The biggest age cohort of hazardous drinkers, according to Ministry of Health reports, are between 18 and 24 years old.

A recent report on the economic impact of alcohol abuse showed the harm of alcohol accounted for over three-quarters of the cost of all addictive drugs - dwarfing the harm caused by headline-making illegal drugs like P.

A central Auckland police officer says dealing with drunks and their behaviour has become "core business" for officers in the city.

The Law Commission recently released a consultation paper, Alcohol in our Lives, outlining options the Government could take to stop booze taking such a toll.

While none of the options are as draconian as those imposed during New Zealand's flirt with temperance in the first half of the 1900s - such as 6 o'clock closing or a freeze on new liquor outlets for the better part of a century - there is consideration given to overhauling age limits, further regulating bar-rooms, restricting sales and raising the excise tax.

Justice Minister Simon Power has taken note of the report, but won't consider acting until the Law Commission's final recommendations are released next year in March, a spokesman says.

Meanwhile, the abuse of alcohol continues to stretch police, swamp hospital emergency rooms and turn quiet roads murderous.

LIKE MANY other cities throughout New Zealand, the drinking culture in Auckland is thriving and, three nights a week, revellers throw caution to the wind.

Queen St by day is the social mecca of Auckland but by night transforms into what the police call a "hot zone" as drunks take to bars and clubs.

At 3am on a Friday night, a lone man sits unconscious at an inner city bus stop, his head between his knees and a pile of vomit at his feet. Left to his own devices he will stay like this for hours.

Other drinkers are refused service by taxis because of their state of intoxication. They weave in and out of traffic looking for the next ride home.

By 4am the streets are relatively clear but the evidence of serious drinking can be seen along the length of Queen St, K Rd and the Viaduct. Beer bottles and broken glass litter the streets.

Urine trails emerge from most dark spots and vomit can be seen on the footpath outside SkyCity Metro as well as more discreet corners along Queen St. Rubbish put out on High St has been kicked along the road and Vulcan Lane is littered with debris and glass.

Senior Sergeant Ben Offner, of Auckland downtown police station, says drinking in the city constitutes 95 per cent of his officers' jobs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

"Preloading happens quite a bit. It's always a busy shift."

Preloading is where people binge drink before coming to town to avoid paying for expensive drinks in bars.

Offner says about 60 per cent of people preload before coming into town and it is not uncommon for people to drink in their cars before heading to licensed premises.

The result is police are often faced with "disorder, violence and people generally being larrikins".

In 2007 and 2008, nationwide, there were more than 20,000 occasions police had to take care of people too drunk to look after themselves.

It is currently not an offence to be intoxicated in a public place.

BACK IN the city, Hayley Jacobsen, 20, admits to having had "a lot" to drink and says she often drinks heavily before going out.

"When you're drinking in town the alcohol is really expensive, so you drink as much as you can at home."

Jacobsen adds she often buys more liquor with friends while in town and consumes it in cars before going into bars to save money.

Wellington emergency department specialist Paul Quigley says young people being drunk is a major problem for the health sector - the accident and emergency department in particular. "The acute intoxication that occurs on a Friday and Saturday night is a phenomenon," he says

Over half of emergency admissions on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are directly related to alcohol abuse by young people.

Facial fractures and hand injuries are common, he says.

Alcohol-related injuries also contribute to 22 per cent of all ACC claims.

Worryingly, increasing numbers of young women are delivered to emergency departments unconscious by ambulance services, says Dr Quigley.

Drinking-related injuries often force people with "real illness" to the back of the line because hospital staff are forced to deal with "noisy, young, obnoxious drunks".

Emergency departments feel the pressure at night as they are understaffed and have to deal with a surge of drunken people who are often confrontational, Dr Quigley says.

"There is almost an expectation that staff will be under threat and face verbal and potentially physical abuse. It's a shame that we're used to it."

Emergency departments often now have security staff working alongside nurses and doctors.

And often hospitals deal with more than broken ankles from drunken falls and broken noses from drunken fights. When young people get behind the wheel the results can be deadly.

SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving) acting general manager Julie Elliotte says despite increased education about the dangers of drink-driving, the message is not getting through. In 2007 there were 128 deaths and 559 alcohol-related serious injuries on New Zealand roads.

Alcohol-related road crashes account for 30 per cent of the road toll.

Elliotte believes that easier purchasing laws have directly affected the drink-driving rate for teenagers. "Fifteen-year-olds see Mum and Dad have three to four drinks and get in the car and drive. The driving stats are high because that's what they are seeing."

After the purchasing age for alcohol was lowered to 18 the number of drink-driving charges rose 50 per cent in Canterbury alone, says Elliotte. Of all the fatal crashes in 2007, 26 per cent involved 15 to 19-year-olds, and 34 per cent involved 20 to 24-year-olds.

Law Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer says public concern is high. At a meeting in Otara last week, more than 100 gathered to share their concerns over alcohol abuse with the Law Commission.

"What we're picking up is that there is a problem, and something needs to be done about it," says Palmer.

The Commission's consultation paper has taken a broad brush approach to possible solutions, suggesting a combination of changes to the purchase age, the hours liquor outlets operate, excise taxes and price regulations might help mitigate some of the worst effects of our drinking.

Reversing the 1999 decision by Parliament to lower the drinking age from 20 to 18 is probably too blunt to be the magic bullet.

In the United States, where the drinking age is 21, university authorities representing 130 schools last year called for the law to be revised as it forced underage drinking underground. "Twenty-one is not working," the university authorities asserted. "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge drinking' - often conducted off campus - has developed."

The Law Commission here has listed, as an option, splitting the purchasing age. A proposal popular with police and health-workers alike, this would allow 18-year-olds to drink on licensed premises, but ban them from purchasing alcohol from off-licences till the age of 20.

The hours liquor licences operate have also come under scrutiny. The Law Commission looked at a nationwide 10pm close to off-licences, as well as restricting bars to a "one-way door" policy late at night. Bars would still stay open late but after, say, 1am would not be allowed to admit any new patrons.

One policy not looked at by the Commission was a pilot programme run in the Scottish town of Amadale last year. There, off-licences were banned from selling alcohol to those under 21 years of age after 5pm. The results from the six-week experiment were dramatic. Police reported a 57 per cent reduction in assault and a 54 per cent fall in vandalism, The Guardian reports.

The addition of health warnings on alcohol products, similar to those for tobacco, was also flagged as an option by the Law Commission, as were a range of measures to increase the price of alcohol.

Excise tax could be raised for most drinks, lowered for low-alcohol beverages, and streamlined to more accurately tax the amount of alcohol. And at the shelf, whether at supermarkets or liquor stores, the Law Commission suggests actions that could see chain stores banned from promoting excessively cheap alcohol.

One liquor chain, for instance, is selling Brenner beer for less than $12 a dozen - working out to less than $3 a litre.

Labour's justice spokeswoman Lianne Dalziel says the heavy discounting of booze has to stop. "I don't want people to buy beer cheaper than they can buy milk," she states.

She supports minimum pricing, which would see an absolute bottom limit set on how cheaply one unit of alcohol could be sold.

Unsurprisingly, one option not on the table, despite the potential savings, is prohibition.

According to a study released earlier this year, problem-drinking costs the country $3.7 billion annually. The cost to police alcohol-related crimes alone is $200m and $166m is subsequently spent on cells to lock up boozers. If alcohol was unavailable in New Zealand, 14,250 additional people would be alive today - equivalent to the population of Fielding.

These economic arguments against alcohol are familiar to Paul Christoffel. He has studied New Zealand's approach to alcohol regulation and says similar arguments were used in the early part of the 20th century.

"They argued that, 'we'll spend a lot less on medical interventions and on crime, and people won't be turning up to work hungover on Monday and productivity will increase'."

Despite reasonably wide support for the idea - three referenda held between 1919 and 1925 had between 47 and 50 per cent of the population supporting a total ban on alcohol - the push for prohibition ended when the United States decided the policy was unworkable in 1933.

The anti-alcohol lobby instead shifted its focus to strengthening restrictions around the sale of alcohol - including maintaining the ban on barmaids.