Alcohol and the fueling of hysteria

Paul Dillon, the director of the private consultancy Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, has got himself a fortune in free media coverage today with the highly colourful (and media friendly) statement:

“They’re sort of like a lost generation, because of the culture they’ve been brought up in. Their views around alcohol have been pretty well established.”

The evidence from the 2007 national drug strategy household survey, paid for by the Commonwealth Government and undertaken by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, presents a less lurid and more hopeful picture around alcohol consumption in Australia.

Interestingly, the survey found (p30) that: “The vast majority of recent drinkers had undertaken at least some alcohol moderation behaviour. The main reason chosen was for health reasons.” This suggests that Australian drinkers are very open to messages about the desirability of reducing their alcohol consumption.

Contrary to the notion consistently put by federal health minister Nicola Roxon, women aged 14 – 29 who were drinking at risky or high risk levels, long-term, were more likely to drink bottled spirits and liqueurs than other drinkers in this age group. And, females in the 14 – 19 age group who were low risk drinkers were more likely to drink ‘alcopops’ (p31), 64.2%, as against 84.9% of the risky and high risk drinkers who preferred bottled spirits and liqueurs.

As to the ‘lost generation’ idea, the survey reported that about half of the age group 14 – 19 drink ‘less than weekly’ and about a third of males aged 20 – 29 drink ‘less than weekly’ and nearly half of females 20 – 29 drink ‘less than weekly’.

When you put together the facts that a lot of young people seem to drink infrequently or at low risk levels and the idea that ‘the vast majority’ of Australians are trying to moderate their drinking behaviour than the situation appears nowhere near as hopeless as Dillion and many others seek to make it out to be. Overall, the report found that patterns of alcohol consumption in Australia have been relatively stable since 2001 (p.ix).

Just finally, one of my favourite findings from this survey is:

Those consuming alcohol at high-risk levels of harm, in both the short- and long-term, were more likely to report fair or poor levels of health than were risky or low-risk drinkers. However, abstainers also reported higher proportions of fair or poor health compared with risky or low-risk drinkers. 

A reason for this seemingly odd finding probably lies in the fact that indigenous Australians who have very poor health overall also are more likely to abstain from alcohol than other Australians. Just shows once again that you have to be careful about reading surveys.

Overall, the survey seems to me to lend support to further education and awareness campaigns but not to support the kind of hysteria that so often fills the media on these social issues.