Our drinking shame

The brilliant writer Caitlin Moran has written the best exposition I’ve ever read on why people drink. In her column in the Times, she explains there are two types of drinkers.

One is steady eyed and rational and can have a couple of pints with their mates then return home. The other is the drinker who says she is going down to the pub with her mates but she really means she is boarding the sky sailing pirate ship to whisky Valhalla.

She has on her magical drinking shoes and Glinda’s kiss upon her forehead and she intends to drink and talk so much that a hurricane will descend. Moran goes on, but you get the picture.

That’s the sort of drinker I am. I love the potential, the possibility of adventure when I go out for a night. The drinking is just the catalyst for getting there.

But really, and this is the drinker Moran doesn’t mention in her column, there is a third type of drinker. The problem drinker. The mean, nasty, abusive drinker.

Or the desperate, unhappy, lonely drinker who wants to be anywhere but in their own skin and will drink so much to alter their reality they do themselves harm.

And increasingly, according to the emergency departments and the police, these problem drinkers are getting younger.

Every time statistics come out from various agencies highlighting the harm teenagers are doing to themselves with alcohol, I feel a frisson of guilt.

I wasn’t one of the MPs who voted to lower the alcohol purchasing age from 20 to 18 — which, in effect, lowered the drinking age — but I certainly supported it. The arguments made sense to me — if you could marry, have children, go to war and vote, surely you could have a drink?

I hadn’t foreseen that lowering of the purchasing age meant young teenagers, the 13, 14 and 15-year-olds, would have much easier access to booze and that many of them would take full advantage of that availability.

Now, the Opportunities Party (Top) has said if it has any influence after the election, it will raise the purchasing age back to 20 and put an excise tax on alcohol that will be spent on programmes to mitigate the harm people do to themselves and others through alcohol.

The tax, according to Gareth Morgan,

HWhat’s your view? letters@hos.co.nz will be higher on RTDs and cheaper drinks, and lower on the pricey wines and top-shelf spirits.

According to Morgan, that’s fair, because the cheap drinks are bought by teens and problem drinkers and they’re the ones the Opportunities Party wants to target.

There was an immediate grumble from Winston Peters, complaining that Top had stolen his policy, and to be fair, Peters has been strong on it ever since the purchase age was lowered.

So the issue is on the table as a policy to be debated in the run up to the election and that’s a good thing.

But really, when you’re talking young people and drugs, be it alcohol or cannabis or any other mind-altering substance, isn’t the real question why so many of them are so deeply unhappy?

The suicide statistics for young people in this country are horrifying, as the Herald’s investigation this week reveals.

We lead the developed world when it comes to 15 to 19-year-olds killing themselves. And we can’t point to any one group of people and say the problem lies there.

The misery of many young people crosses all strata of society. For many, they choose to escape their unhappiness by getting out of it — however they can, with whatever they can.

Many of us drank too much from time to time as teenagers and young adults. Some of us still do, even though we are putatively responsible adults.

But we can’t dismiss teen drinking as kids being kids when we look at the number of young people drinking themselves to harm in conjunction with the number of young people killing themselves.

There is clearly a deeper malaise affecting our kids than not being able to handle their drink. But that’s a far harder problem to tackle.

Putting up the age young people have access to alcohol? That’s easy.

But working out why so many young New Zealanders have so little faith in their futures that they kill themselves? I’ll vote for the party with an answer for that.

According to hospitals and the police, problem drinkers are getting younger.

Kerre McIvor is on NewstalkZB, Monday-Friday, noon-4pm

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