Scary alcohol stats

[Ab]

The latest Ministry of Health Alcohol Use Survey came out yesterday afternoon.

It shows:
Fewer adults drinking;
More drinkers drink only a couple times a week;
Drinking to intoxication is down;
Risky drinking has declined
Fewer people report having gone to work while under the influence of alcohol;
Fewer drinkers experienced injury due to drinking;
Fewer drinkers reported harm to their social life or friends;
Harms caused by others' drinking are down;
Fewer adults report having started drinking before age 15.
Reduced harms from drinking across the board.

How much press coverage did it get? Nada. The ONLY thing a Google News search turns up is Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne's press release saying that everything's great.

Maybe when a report's so good that the usual screamers can't find anything to yell about, it just doesn't get covered.

But do remember it when next there's a push for clamping down harder on bar closing times, restricting outlet density, banning advertising and the like.

http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot....hol-abuse.html

[Lightspeed]

lolz, probably cause people are too poor to buy booze, National know it and are too smart to point out the improvements in case someone cottons on to that.

[Ab]

[fixed_truth]

I'm interested in what are some of the factors that are bringing about this change.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Ab

I don't suppose you were going for some kind "outcomes" angle were you? As if isolated instances of improvement are meaningful in the context of disastrous failures?

[Ab]

It's common knowledge that NZ is in the middle of an alcohol crisis. Consumption up, crime and health problems related to alcohol up, ages of drinkers down, we need to increase taxes and ban sales and shorten trading hours and won't somebody think of the children.

And then you look at the actual stats, and common knowledge is full of shit.

[Lightspeed]

Common knowledge isn't worth much. That's common knowledge.

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by Ab

But do remember it when next there's a push for clamping down harder on bar closing times, restricting outlet density, banning advertising and the like.

Or perhaps we should be supporting these moves as, according to this report, they seem to actually be working in reducing issues surrounding drinking.

Pixie

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

cause people are too poor to buy booze,

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=alcohol+con...ring+recession

[Gijoe^]

Beer sales are in decline by volume for the last 12+ months,
I can tell you this as fact, both from my observations in the industry, and from actual data from breweries. rtd's plato'd.

Overall volumes are down by volume.

Booze prices in the great depression where much lower, beer & spirits have very high tax rates in nz. both from gst and excise.

[leadinjector]

Originally Posted by Ab

It's common knowledge that NZ is in the middle of an alcohol crisis. Consumption up, crime and health problems related to alcohol up, ages of drinkers down, we need to increase taxes and ban sales and shorten trading hours and won't somebody think of the children.

And then you look at the actual stats, and common knowledge is full of shit.

goes into that whole bin of bullshit people nod their heads to each other about like how the world isnt safe anymore

[StN]

I'm still keeping my end up, so who's dropped the ball?

[CCS]

Well Ab has left the country to torment pinball machines elsewhere...

[Golden Teapot]

Over generations of my team at work I've observed that those who are immigrants generally don't drink very much and that a noticeable proportion of those who are not first-generation immigrants are extremely thirsty relatively speaking.

Today I'll see two people share a beer since one is too much. Or worse someone wanting to share a bottle of premium mineral water that I'd been hoping to scoff myself.

I offer Friday drinks every Friday; this consumes a fair bit of my budget for team entertainment. From next Friday this is morphing into "Friday ice cream in a cone" because when I touted this as an idea the reaction was strongly "yes we want that instead of drinks".

The resident population has grown more than 18% in the last two decades; if nothing were done I'd still bet money (not much though without doing some actual research first) on per-capita alcohol consumption having gone down quite a bit.

[Ab]

Culturally NZ and Australia are still feeling the aftereffects of the "6 o'clock swill".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_o%27clock_swill

It's an attitudinal bubble slowly moving to the right-hand side of the age curve.

[MadMax]

was that not replaced by "one for the road"?