Alcohol fueled violence

[prawn_86]

I'd prefer to see a minnimum price for alcohol to stop the cheapp stuff being so cheap.

You think it is cheap in Aus? Over here you can get a bottle of vodka for $10, a case of beer for the same price etc

I bought a bottle of champagne last night at the store for 75USD, it is over 200AUD at home.

 

[sydboy007]

You think it is cheap in Aus? Over here you can get a bottle of vodka for $10, a case of beer for the same price etc

I bought a bottle of champagne last night at the store for 75USD, it is over 200AUD at home.

You can buy a 5 litre Berri wine cask for < $14 depending on what special is being run by one of the large bottle shop chains.

Each cask is equivalent to 48 standard drinks.

The issue is more around wine based products. I'm not sure how much the rebating of the WET for producers is helping with the cheapness of wine - it's capped at $500,000 per producer but with so many brands buying on contract it could be possible some of the cheap brands are taking advantage multiple times on the rebate. Dropping that limit might be a good start.

I'd prefer to see some sort of minimum cost per standard drink, say 50 cents, so that the cheap wine products are pushed up in price, but spirits are relatively left alone because they are already on the expensive side when compared to most other countries. At 50 cents a standard drink the Berri wine cask suddenly has to be at least $24.

 

[prawn_86]

You can buy a 5 litre Berri wine cask for < $14 depending on what special is being run by one of the large bottle shop chains.

I guarantee you that those involved in 'alcohol fuelled violence' are not drinking cask wine

 

[sydboy007]

I guarantee you that those involved in 'alcohol fuelled violence' are not drinking cask wine

You've never been a poor uni student and made some cheap goon? Cheap wine, cheap vodka, let the fun begin.

I agree it may not help as much with the violence occurring around night clubs, but it will certainly help in cutting consumption in the homes of welfare recipients. I walk past the Redfern Tower blocks some days and these 4 or 5 litre wine casks is all most of the residents there are buying.

it might help to stop the next generation of alcoholics from being quite so big. It would be interesting to find out how many of the people being the aggressors have grown up in families with drinking issues. Anything that helps to cut over consumption of alcohol is a good thing in my book.

 

[CanOz]

I guarantee you that those involved in 'alcohol fueled violence' are not drinking cask wine

ROTFLMAO!

 

[prawn_86]

You've never been a poor uni student and made some cheap goon? Cheap wine, cheap vodka, let the fun begin.

I Always said if I could only afford goon I wouldn't drink. Although yes, there were some uni parties involving it, no violence though.

Maybe alcohol isn't to blame...

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/steroid-use-soars-among-young-men-20140109-30kks.html

 

[Chris45]

It's not only alcohol that's the problem.

Steroids have overtaken heroin and methamphetamines as the substance of choice for people injecting drugs in New South Wales, with people as young as 15 shooting up the drug.

The figures come from a study carried out by the Australian Needle and Syringe Program.

It found that up to 74 per cent of new injecting drug users in New South Wales were shooting up steroids, up from just 27 per cent in 2003.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton says bulked-up sports stars are influencing young people to take steroids.

"The concerns are that it's the average person in the street now that's starting to think about these substances to attain the perfect body image," he said.

"We used to worry about our girls, but now it's the young boys as well."

Meanwhile Prime Minister Tony Abbott has questioned whether steroid abuse is contributing to incidents of street violence.

"I'm appalled by the violent binge drinking culture that now seems so prevalent, especially at "hot spots" in our big cities," the PM wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"We also have to identify if drugs like steroids are also contributing to this outbreak of violent behaviour.

"There is enough anecdotal evidence from police and our emergency rooms that what we are seeing is not fuelled by alcohol alone. Alcohol is consumed along with other drugs such as ice and other amphetamines."

On Thursday Mr Abbott called for the perpetrators of violent unprovoked attacks to feel the full force of the law, saying the attacks on innocent victims were "utterly cowardly" and marked a "vicious, horrible change" in society.

"Tragically, it's not just one young life that is destroyed but many," he said. "In an instant, one person becomes a victim, another a criminal - and the lives of their families are irrevocably damaged.

"We need to tackle this issue in a comprehensive and considered way. We don't need kneejerk reactions and stunts that give the illusion of action, but don't make any real, lasting difference."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-...enous-drug-of-choice-nsw-survey-finds/5193472

 

[McLovin]

I guarantee you that those involved in 'alcohol fuelled violence' are not drinking cask wine

Yeah, I agree. I grew up in the 90's back then drinking underage meant beer or goon in Double Bay Park on a Saturday night. Hardly any flights because you've got to drink *a lot* of either to get rugby league drunk. Kids today are getting hammered on spirits. Half a bottle of Jim Beam, mixed with some bogan dust is what causes idiots to go out and smack a stranger.

 

[Smurf1976]

You think it is cheap in Aus? Over here you can get a bottle of vodka for $10, a case of beer for the same price etc

It truly amazed me how cheap alcohol is in the US when I went there on holidays in 2012. That plus alcohol being sold at places where it just wouldn't happen in Australia.

Despite the low price and easy availability I didn't see any real problems caused by it though. People seemed to be having one beer after a meal etc with no intention of actually getting drunk. Even late at night there seemed to be relatively few problems at least in the areas I went to.

The problem in Australia is cultural in my opinion. Despite their tendency to do everything "big", Americans seem to have a much better attitude towards alcohol so far as I could tell. No doubt people do get drunk, but it didn't seem to be happening in the silly way we do it here.

 

[Smurf1976]

Yeah, I agree. I grew up in the 90's back then drinking underage meant beer or goon in Double Bay Park on a Saturday night. Hardly any flights because you've got to drink *a lot* of either to get rugby league drunk. Kids today are getting hammered on spirits. Half a bottle of Jim Beam, mixed with some bogan dust is what causes idiots to go out and smack a stranger.

Scenario 1. Someone leaves home at 8pm and starts drinking in a city nightclub, moving between a few venues during the course of the night and finishing their drinking at 4am.

Scenario 2. Someone "pre loads" with spirits etc and takes drugs the turns up at the club soon after showing no ill effects. Once inside, they buy a few more alcoholic drinks but nothing that would be considered excessive as such.

I know which one is going to lead to trouble and it's not the former. Unless you're rich, going from zero to seriously drunk inside a club isn't a particularly affordable thing to do for your average young person with limited finances. And whilst RSA is pretty loosely enforced at most places, they've got no real chance of enforcing it at all if someone is loads up before they go inside - they've only served them a modest amount of alcohol after all and it's not as though anyone demands a breath test at the bar.

Whilst I agree that nightclubs are part of the problem, the are also themselves a victim to some extent. Pay $10 - 20 at the door to get in but that doesn't cover their costs of renting / owning the building (rather expensive in a city location), council rates, insurance, power (of which nightclubs use quite a lot - air-conditioning, refrigeration, lights, sound, video walls if they have one etc), staff (of which you need quite a few to run a club both operational and security either contracted or directly employed), paying DJ's (not cheap if they're decent), cleaning (and there's plenty of that required) and so on. They need to sell drinks to actually make a profit, and if someone has loaded up on booze or drugs just before coming in then that's not a good situation for the club either financially or in terms of responsibly serving alcohol. They're caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place - either keep selling drinks regardless of how drunk someone is, or go out of business.

I've been following this debate on and off since the goings on in Hobart late 2005 and I'm convinced that certain (not all) illicit drugs, bottle shop sales and the overall attitude of people is a far bigger contributor than clubs as such. The nightclubs aren't completely innocent, but I'm pretty sure that any decent operator would be all too glad to have their customers turn up sober and without drugs.

The March 2013 report of the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund (NDLERF), “Patron
Offending and Intoxication in Night-Time Entertainment Districts” examined the nature and extent
of pre-loading in detail.12
In part it found that almost two thirds of people admitted to pre-loading an average of six standard
drinks. Generally males reported pre-loading more than females and with higher levels of
consumption.
The major motivation for pre-loading was price with almost two thirds (61%) reporting this as the
primary reason.

Quote from http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&r...bvnVmck_BTztI8tYQ&sig2=4idM6huCWf5pohRd2taoMA

 

[Tink]

Until our justice system gets tough on crime, and people are made responsible for their actions, this is only going to get worse.
With freedom comes responsibilities, and these people are just playing the system and growing in numbers.
The viciousness is beyond measure, and its drugs and alcohol, both.

When our elderly are under threat, you know there is a problem.
Something needs to change.

 

[IFocus]

Late coming into the conversation

Having served an apprenticeship in the 70's on Thursday we would finish work at 3.00pm head to pub drink to closing 10.00pm then drive home get changed and head out to Pinocchio's or that other place Beethoven's drink harvey wall bangers to around 3 or 4 in the morning then front up at work.

I do cringe a bit now thinking about it.

None of the guys I hung out with would have thought of punching anyone ....none.

Was there alcohol fueled violence then, yep I would image same as now some muscle bound loser would pick out the weakest looking guy and just go a smack him no different to today.

Same as a when I as 19 year old late 70's on construction in the Northwest some muscle bound loser would pick out the weakest looking guy and just go a smack him and then of course it would an all in brawl.

Whats different is I don't remember anyone dying.

There were drugs around but no meth

 

[Tink]

If anyone is interested in signing this petition, who hasn't already.

http://www.change.org/thomaskelly

This one is in Melbourne too.

http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitio...-hon-dennis-napthine-mp-change-one-punch-laws

 

[DB008]

Another "Greens" brain fart policy.


Greens push for alcohol abuse inquiry gets Australian Medical Association support

The government will be asked to consider increasing the cost of alcohol, and imposing labelling restrictions on suppliers, as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into Australia's alcohol problem being pushed by the Greens.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/greens-push-for-alcohol-abuse-inquiry-gets-australian-medical-association-support-20140118-311s9.html#ixzz2qotHYyOQ

 

[dutchie]

David Penberthy: A new generation of gutless thugs


THE bloke accused of the coward punch murder of Daniel Christie appears to be the pin-up boy for a new ugliness in our culture which didn't exist when I was young.

Shaun McNeil is an inked-up, pumped-up, mixed martial arts-loving gym junkie.

He is a lover of social media, and has turned his dopey little corner of the internet into his personal shrine. He's posted an endless series of snaps and selfies flexing his pecs, showing off his tatts in a ripped muscle shirt, triumphantly holding an empty bottle of Bundy, apparently consumed in its entirety, in what may be the crowning achievement of his life to date.

He's a bloke who didn't go to my high school. None of us who went on to university acted like him. Not one of my friends who left school in Year 10 and Year 11 to become a tradie or work at the local car factory acted like him either.

He is a new Australian man. He is also a man, to borrow a crude but evocative phrase from the youngsters, who I really wish would just f*** off and die.

It appears to be mandatory to describe the random, mindless violence we have seen in pubs and on footpaths around the nation as "alcohol-fuelled" violence.I hate this term.

A more appropriate term would be scumbag-fuelled violence, as the focus on alcohol lets the scumbags off the hook.

There are tens of thousands of Australians who frequently engage in what those abstemious folks in the health lobby describe as "dangerous" drinking.

They do so without sending anyone to hospital, or to an early grave. I am one of them. So is almost everyone I know.

For me, "dangerous" drinking brings with it the risk of winding up in a karaoke bar and singing a woeful version of Air Supply's "All Out Of Love" or having a savage argument with my mate Darien about the result of the 1978 SANFL grand final.

This is the kind of thing which happens to the overwhelming majority of Australians when they drink to what the experts call "dangerous" levels. They end up having a dangerously good time, where the only real danger is that somebody might die laughing.

The current emphasis on the availability of alcohol, on alcohol advertising and sports sponsorships, and the mindless persecution of publicans who have a vested (and demonstrated) interest in preventing violence on their premises....it's largely a load of exculpatory nonsense which elevates the role of external factors and lets flawed individuals off the hook.

Excessive drinking has always been with us. The nation was founded by some of the world's most accomplished pissheads. The die was cast that night in or around 1788 when they decided to let the female convicts ashore and the blokes broke into the rum supplies, and Sydney's first street party erupted down by the Tank Stream.

The statistics suggest that something has changed in the past decade, with 91 deaths from coward punches since the year 2000.

Blaming alcohol is a cop-out. The people who deserve the blame hail from that moronic new breed of man described above. For what it's worth, my rat fur-lined theory is that three things have changed since I was at high school and starting out with grog.

One involves the vain and vacuous world of social media. Another goes to the increasing use of steroids and methamphetamine. The third is the influence of bikie culture on the cultural mainstream.

For all its upsides, one of the defining features of social media is its absurd level of self-absorption. The he-men of the past had only a mirror in which to admire themselves, a bit like Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

Nowadays they can find equally feeble-minded narcissists in cyberspace where they can boast about their physical prowess, be it their ability to cut their heads open by crushing a beer can and withstand the pain, to put the gloves on and lay into the heavy bag at the local gym, or in the worst cases, to chronicle their own acts of violence or vandalism towards people and property with stills and video.

I can't comment about McNeil, but many of these blokes also fit into the second category of being both pumped up on steroids and jacked up on speed. This week I interviewed a drug and alcohol researcher who said one of the emerging (and urgent) areas of research went to the interplay between booze, speed and steroids, and the subsequently aberrant behaviour of those who were taking this insane cocktail, perhaps on account of sporting a pair of ossified testicles though their habitual steroid use.

Give me two stubbies of Cascade, four glasses of shiraz and a Beam and Coke any day.

The third point can best be illustrated through the way in which a lot of these blokes carry themselves and choose to dress. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that having a tatt or wearing a certain outfit makes you a violent person. If you want to get a tatt, good luck to you. But if you look at these blokes, they can often be found aping (an apt word) the sort of "hard-casual" look affected by the bikie gangs, with the neck and face tatts, the G-Star Raw tees, deliberately one size too small, and most tellingly of all, a weird way of walking from side to side with their arms formed in triangles, as if they're ready to punch pretty much anyone, anywhere, any time.

It's because they are.

Our nation was once largely comprised of genial, drunken boofheads who were most at risk of passing out in a mate's toilet.

You would measure the success of a night on the turps by how much fun you've had. Sickeningly, for this new breed of blokes, you measure its success by the number of strangers you've belted.


http://www.news.com.au/national/dav...of-gutless-thugs/story-fncynjr2-1226806050689

It's the gutless wonders in our society who are just looking for a fight (drunk or sober) that are to blame.
Alcohol is just an excuse.

 

[Tink]

I would say these people are violent already and it makes matters worse adding drugs and alcohol.

I am over their excuses and its time the law dealt with it with harsher sentences.

 

[dutchie]

I would say these people are violent already and it makes matters worse adding drugs and alcohol.

I am over their excuses and its time the law dealt with it with harsher sentences.

Spot on Tink.

Get these cowards off our streets. Let them start fights between themselves in jail to their hearts content.

 

[sydboy007]

O'Farrell has finally been forced to do something, though I'm not sure if was the right something.

I'm all for punishing people for their actions, but in general terms increasing mandatory sentences isn't going to make most of the people that do the cowards punch rethink their actions.

Meanwhile, public health expert Dr Alex Wodak said he would ''wager a huge amount of money that the word 'tough' would be used in the cabinet announcement 20 times and there would not be a single evidence-based recommendation''.

The NSW government held wide-reaching alcohol summits in 2003 and last year but almost no progress was made in the intervening years, an analysis by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) found.

Just 19 of 107 preventive recommendations were adopted, mostly ''awareness-raising'' measures with little evidence of their effectiveness. The 2003 summit was instigated by then premier Bob Carr.

FARE policy director Caterina Giorgi said that knowledge about what could work in relation to alcohol abuse had grown in 10 years yet the challenge was making governments rely on evidence and break away from the hotels and alcohol lobby.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/alcohol-s...-publicised-20140120-314w8.html#ixzz2qym3j46Y

This is something both sides of politics will have to answer for. Considering the effectiveness of the 2007 RTA Pinky add we already have a reasonable blue print for how to tackle the problem at the source, rather than mopping up the victims and perpetrators after a tragedy has occurred:

Recent provisional road fatality statistics show that NSW has experienced significant
reductions compared to the rest of Australia. Pleasingly the reductions have been even greater
among the high risk road user group of young drivers.

http://acrs.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Watsford1.pdf

Provisional figures for the twelve months ending July 2008 show that the NSW road toll has decreased by 22% since the year 2006. In contrast the road toll for the rest of Australia over the same period actually increased by 1%.

A breakdown of the NSW data for this same period shows that
- Speed related fatalities decreased by 32%
- Fatalities from Young Driver Crashes (Aged 17 to 25 Years) decreased by 30%
- Fatalities from Speeding Young Driver Crashes (Aged 17 to 25 Years) decreased by 45%

Imagine an effective campaign against abusive drinking achieving the above kind of stats within 1 YEAR!!

We've had so many effective education campaigns in the past - The Grimm Reaper adds helped Australia to achieve one of the lowest HIV rates in the world and was haled at the time to be one of the most effective public health campaigns ever, or the catchy Drink driving campaign 'Will you be under oh 5 or under arrest" in the 80s.

It just seems so often we wait too long, then explore more expensive options before getting around to raising community awareness and getting public attitudes to change so we become self policing.

 

[McLovin]

I'm all for punishing people for their actions, but in general terms increasing mandatory sentences isn't going to make most of the people that do the cowards punch rethink their actions.

The mandatory sentences are the kind of rubbish you expect to see in Queensland. I mean seriously, 4 years for affray, but only if you're affected by drugs and/or alcohol.

So, what Fatty O'Barrel is saying with this half baked nonsense is that this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tLOKzDeqKU

Is just boys being boys. But if you've had a sip of beer and do the same you should be locked up for four years.

 

[sydboy007]

The mandatory sentences are the kind of rubbish you expect to see in Queensland. I mean seriously, 4 years for affray, but only if you're affected by drugs and/or alcohol.

So, what Fatty O'Barrel is saying with this half baked nonsense is that this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tLOKzDeqKU

Is just boys being boys. But if you've had a sip of beer and do the same you should be locked up for four years.

There's going to be so many issues with these laws.

As has been highlighted in the SMH today, what happens if you're in a pub and you or your GF is harrassed by someone drunk, you try to ignore it but eventually they get physical and push comes to shove to punches and the instigator dies due to hitting their head on the corner of a table. You've had a few drinks so technically drunk as you'll blow over point oh five. Seems there's nothing in the proposed legislation.

I also don't hear any mention of the $269 / day it will cost to keep to keep him in jail for the mandatory 8 years ie $785K. With inflation it looks like it could be a cool million a conviction.

From a report on the successful anti speeding Pinky Add http://acrs.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Watsford1.pdf

The ‘Speeding. No One Thinks Big of You’ campaign took a fundamentally different tact – a social approach. It put the issue back in the hands of the community, empowering people to increase the social unacceptability of speeding, building on and extending the gains of previous speeding campaigns.

In the context of the campaign the ‘Pinkie’ gesture, as it became known, created a way for the whole community to come together to demonstrate their disapproval of a speeder’s actions – family, friends and peers alike. The key to the success of the gesture is it is never directed at a motorist, it is always the behaviour being targeted.

One of the key innovations of the campaign was delivering the anti-speeding message in a youthful, non-authoritative way, a noticeable move away from convention. It also served to provoke a timely public debate and galvanise the wider community behind a campaign to make speeding socially unacceptable.

It was understood that, while the ad may depict young offenders, the message would be aimed at all of those who speed and drive in a loutish manner.

Our P Plate drivers in this exploratory research were engaged by the concept and immediately saw its potential to deter poor driving practice motivated by the need to show off. It provides an avenue for peer group pressure to work towards more positive, rather than negative outcomes.

Why are we looking to cost the community millions in locking people up, when most likely there wont be a large drop in the kinds of behaviour that lead to these unfortunate deaths. When the .05 blood alcohol limit was first introduced someone who was caught via RBT would get quite a bit of sympathy from the community as it was seen to be bad luck. After a few years of public education campaigns drunk driving came to be seen in a very negative way and someone admitting to be caught DUI would usually get a negative reaction from other. I don't see why there hasn't been multiple public education campaigns in NSW. You can't outlaw bad behaviour unless you get the community onside to reinforce the message.