The Binge Drinking Farce

How public discourse embraces a tiresome issue

I used to love this sunburned country. Now I think it’s a bit sun-stroked. The Rudd government’s decision to impose a 70% tax increase on bottled mixed alcoholic drinks−so-called alcopops−is yet another blow to logic and good sense in this country of ours, and it seems we are spiraling further down into the vortex of conservatism that is becoming typical of countries burdened by an oversupply of poorly educated and increasingly paranoid ageing baby-boomers.

Anybody who has recently tried to do business, conduct transactions, even perform basic banking functions in the United States will know how difficult simple things have become in post-Patriot Act America. Dubai Ports World sure found out. They were the company denied the opportunity to take over operations of six US mainland ports due to security concerns, despite being, well, just another profit-motivated company. Fox News, the stalwart of credible, objective news reporting in the US, rhetorically asked “with this company being a Middle East operation, why would this country turn over operation of six major ports to it?” Good question. It isn’t all one-way traffic for Fox however, as they also conceded that the “entry of terrorism through our ports is a well known threat, even when the ports are run by non Arab states” (italics inserted). The west can shut up shop for business all it likes, but it needs to acknowledge the consequences of doing so−the baby boomer generation’s children will become the first generation in a long time not to enjoy higher standards of living than their parents.

How am I linking Dubai Ports World and the binge drinking issue? Both are illustrations of how readily a frightened public will accept a government and media-driven agenda as established fact. Just like there are American people who watch Fox News as if its real news, there is a critical mass in the Australian public who have been sold a false reality when it comes to the notion of binge drinking, and they have agreeably lapped it up. As an occasional observer−being a non-resident−I probably notice these catch-phrase oddities more than most. ‘Binge drinking’ is a mightily popular phrase right now in Australia, and nobody’s even bothered to ask what it means.

Let’s set some things straight. Drinking every weekend, and not touching a drop during the week, does not make an alcoholic. An alcoholic is someone addicted to alcohol−which is probably going to manifest itself in the need to drink every day, if not close to it. Binge drinking seems to refer to drinking excessively, meaning to a point of intoxication, and doing so on a frequent but intermittent basis (i.e. on weekends).

The 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey showed that teenage girls were more likely to drink alcohol than teenage boys. Brilliant. Studies among teenagers also found 85% of teenage girls believed they were ‘not the prettiest but maybe the second prettiest girl in school, although maybe a bit fat around the arse,’ and that ‘Test cricket is, like, boring.’ So where’s the tax on cricket and fat arses, Mr Rudd? Or perhaps it’s the bad language associated with alcohol the government is concerned about. The same study found that more than a quarter of respondents were verbally abused by someone under the influence of alcohol. Chilling stuff, that.

For the same reasons that we need to be skeptical about exit polls that reveal that Barack Obama was voted for by more people than really voted for him, we need to be wary of surveys of teenagers. People lie… even to people conducting surveys. More problematic is the grip our poorly educated baby boomer generation has on popular opinion, the media, and the language we use to describe social phenomena.

Even if the surveys are accurate, when we ask teenagers how often they binge drink before we tell them what binge drinking is, we risk getting misleading results. When I drink, I drink to excess. I like drinking. It’s fun. It’s social. It relaxes me after a hard week of work.

Do I binge drink? I don’t know. On any given Saturday or Sunday morning anyone who wants to know is welcome to ask me, but I usually got too drunk to remember if I binge drank the night before, and I’m not always up to answering survey questions. Friday nights not infrequently begin with a few quiet, cold beers, and then gradually descend into mayhem through the vessels of two or three bottles of whiskey, a few shots of tequila, and one or two bottles of Baileys to wash it down. With friends, of course.

Saturday is more often than not an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant night out, including all-you-can-drink sake. Good food, good drinks, good friends. A problem? Who knows. And who cares. I drink to get drunk, just like they do all over East Asia, for example… where 2/5s of the world’s population lives with remarkably low levels of random street crime and violence. Japan has the second largest economy in the world and one of its richest societies. Korea is the eighth largest economy in the world and the global leader in semiconductors. China is closing in on the US in terms of economic size, regards 10% annual growth as too slow, and graduates hundreds of thousands of capable engineers every year. Binge drinking doesn’t seem to be doing this part of the world all that much harm.

I don’t encourage underage drinking obviously, but it’s not my job to discourage it. Nor is it the Australian government’s. Taxing alcopops to prevent people who aren’t legally supposed to be drinking them anyway from drinking them is much like taxing handguns to discourage their use. We’re not actually buying them, Mr Rudd.

The most irritating thing about this whole scenario is how quickly the mass media can latch onto the catch phrase of the month and how quickly the general public will take it and run with it. Society has no greater tool with which it can contort and destroy itself than a fool with a fool’s newspaper thinking he’s learning about the world.

Australia has an ageing population ill equipped to deal with an increasingly complex world and a government pandering to its fears at every turn. This is very much a generational war. When I feel my generation is getting closer to winning it, I might consider bringing my own children into the world. And when I do, I’ll teach them about the risks alcohol can pose to a developing brain.

Training immigrant doctors in Australia

The Australian medical fraternity has announced the successful implementation of a new re-training program intended for immigrant doctors to Australia. The program lasts two years and new Australians are licensed to practice medicine in Australia once they have completed the program.

Immigrants from most countries are tested and trained so that they meet Australian medical standards. Typically, immigrants trained at universities and hospitals in their home countries practice medicine using methods and techniques that exceed Australian standards. They are required to be re-trained so as to reduce their skills and knowledge in order to better suit Australian standards of medical care.

Head of the Australian Medical Standards Association, Dr Warren, said the program has proven extremely successful, claiming “Each and every new Australian doctor is taught how to properly misdiagnose, mis-prescribe, and use appropriate methods of malpractice. We have seen the skill level among our immigrant medical professionals fall by an average of 45% over the past three years, which is a terrific result.”

In areas highly populated with immigrant populations, and often immigrant doctors, the rates of cures and effective medical treatment regimes exceeded national averages by up to a factor of 2-to-1. “Clearly, past re-training schemes have failed the Australian public,” said Dr Warren, “We are proud to say that the AMSA’s new training structures are getting our new Australian doctors up to speed with Australian medical standards faster than ever before.”

Dr Warren concluded his press conference by reassuring the Australian public that the risk of receiving appropriate treatment, correct diagnoses, and cures for common diseases was falling rapidly. “Our safety net is very strong. We will not allow a single immigrant doctor to bring their superior medical practices to our country.”