Do you drink too much alcohol?
We hit the streets to ask locals who enjoy the occasional happy hour in Warragul if they know how much alcohol is too much.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beer holder, but good health is a different story – it is one of the leading contributors to Australia’s burden of disease.
“Alcohol causes more than 3200 cases of cancer every year, including cancers of the breast, bowel, mouth, throat and liver,” said Cancer Council Victoria CEO, Todd Harper.
“While guidelines for low risk drinking exist in Australia, community knowledge of the guidelines is poor. Too many Australians are either unaware of the recommendations, or they overestimate the amount of alcohol that is safe to consume without significantly increasing risk of long or short term harm,” Mr Harper said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports show that 16.4 per cent of Victorians are now drinking more than two standard drinks per day- more than were doing so in the past nine years.
The majority (67 per cent) of people aged 16 to 29 years are consuming more alcohol than National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines, according to VicHealth.
Those guidelines recommend no more than two standard drinks on any day. This equates to two pots of regular beer, or 100ml of wine.
It is also advised that people should never consume more than four standard drinks on a single occasion.
The lack of awareness of the guidelines is worse for males than females. The 2016 National Drug Strategy Household survey found that 32 per cent of males believe they can drink three or more drinks every day without putting their health at risk, compared with only nine per cent of women.
New research by Cancer Council Victoria has found that advertisements providing education about low-risk drinking guidelines could help people reduce their alcohol consumption.
As such, Cancer Council Victoria is calling on the Government to address the need for drinking guideline mass education.
The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education’s (FARE) Chief Executive, Michael Thorn, agrees. “It really is a dangerous cocktail. Community awareness of alcohol’s link with a range of chronic health conditions remains low. Only one in four Australians have some awareness of the actual content of the official drinking guidelines,” he said.
High consumption of alcohol is also a major contributor to some types of crimes committed in the Baw Baw Shire, according to local area commander, Police Inspector Alison Crombie.
Insp Crombie said that although the Warragul area didn’t particularly stand out compared with other areas in metropolitan Melbourne, many incidences the local police attend are alcohol fuelled.
“Alcohol is not a contributor to serious crimes, it is more social crimes, such as wilful damage like breaking windows, or graffiti. It’s also assaults; on the weekend, people have too much to drink, they empty out onto the streets. It might be one footy team against the other. Where they might usually be a little more social and respectful of one another, they have fights.”
She said that although the area had never seen a death from a one punch assault, it’s only a matter of time.
“We have had many assaults in the street and it will only take one person to be hit the right fashion, or hit their head on the kerb or the pavement and we will have a death,” she said.
Insp Crombie believes that alcohol fuelled violence is very dangerous because the crimes are spontaneous.
“Alcohol is a huge contributing factor for family violence. People drink at home and end up arguing and do silly things,” she said.
Inspector Crombie would like to see an increase in police numbers in the area rather than more education. She has concerns that as the population of Warragul continues to grow, and the demographic changes, an increase in domestic and alcohol related crime is inevitable.
“I really think people have enough education now, with ads on the TV about exceeding .05; which is now an automatic loss of licence. I think people are pretty well educated about alcohol. It’s not the lower alcohol readings that cause the problems,” she said.
The national FARE Annual Alcohol Poll 2018 showed that 57 per cent of Australians believe that governments are not doing enough to address alcohol harm, and 68 per cent think that the alcohol industry should pay for reducing alcohol harm.