Aussies debate government battle against booze

Government by moral panic?
In May, the southern state of Victoria joined the battle with a three-month ban on people entering Melbourne pubs after 2 a.m., prompting a protest that drew thousands. Men in business suits screamed into bullhorns alongside cheering senior citizens and 20-somethings. "This is government by moral panic!" one speaker declared.

Officials let the ban expire after three months and are now looking at other solutions, such as placing more officers on the streets.

Last month, New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees heralded what he called a "new era" by imposing strict conditions on 50 of the state's most notorious pubs, including shorter business hours and the mandatory use of plastic cups after midnight, rather than glasses.

Attacks with broken glass rose 7.1 percent between 2003 and 2007 in New South Wales, and alcohol-related, non-domestic assaults were up 7.8 percent between 2004 and 2007, according to the state's Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

"It isn't about stopping people at the end of a hard day," Rees told reporters. "What it is about is stopping drunken behavior that ends in violence."

Taxed to the limit
Walter Tuarae, the 40-year-old owner of Melt, a bar in Sydney's notoriously rowdy Kings Cross nightclub district, sits on a stool on a Friday night nursing a tall glass of water. No one here is throwing up or throwing punches.

Tuarae is frustrated by what he sees as a misplaced, overblown response to an age-old issue.

"Some of the best ideas are born out of a few beers and a few glasses of wine," he says. "It's an attack on the very social fabric of this country."

Tuarae says he learned how to handle alcohol young; he had his first beer at a family barbecue when he was 12. If the government wants people to cut back on drinking, he says, it should focus less on regulations and taxes and more on getting families to teach their kids limits.

Still, the tax on premixed drinks appears to have at least temporarily cut sales, says University of Melbourne sociologist Robin Room. The 2 a.m. pub lockouts may do nothing to quell the violence, but at least they have people paying attention, he says.

But raising taxes doesn't address the underlying culture, warns Milton Lewis, historian of medicine and public health at The University of Sydney and author of "A Rum State: Alcohol and State Policy in Australia."

Interactive Blood-alcohol level Enter your weight and number of drinks consumed to calculate an approximate blood-alcohol level. msnbc.com

Nation of boozers?
Australians actually aren't the world's biggest drinkers — Ugandans are. The World Health Organization ranks Australia a distant 34th in per capita alcohol consumption. Aussies drink less than the British, but slightly more than Americans.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia say the country's per capita consumption fell in the 1990s and has held steady since.

"There is a sort of line being spun by our political masters that there is this sort of mass drinking culture in Australia — which there is, but it's not unique to Australia," says Dr. Paul Haber, head of alcohol studies at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney.

Still, the image of the boozy Australian persists.

"It's interwoven into our culture — we work hard and we play hard. And I think that's an image that we like of ourselves," says Richard Midford, associate professor and project leader with the National Drug Research Institute. "I think it comes out of a sort of romantic legend from our past."

Against the trend
Critics of the efforts to lock out pub patrons say history demonstrates they will fail.

"There's going to be absolute mayhem out there," Tuarae says from his bar stool. "You pour those people out into the streets at 2 a.m. in the morning — God forbid what's gonna happen."

Upstairs, Erin Marsh, a 26-year-old radio announcer from Sydney, sips a pineapple daiquiri. Australia clearly has a binge drinking culture, she says. Less clear is how to fix it.

"I just don't know what the government can do because, really, at the end of the day, it's about changing a social trend," Marsh says. "And how do you do that?"

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