Prime Minister Kevin Rudd plans to spend $53 million on the problem of binge drinking, including $19.1 million to target underage drinkers. As the mother of three daughters, aged 21, 19 and 18, I feel I have a good insight into the dynamics fuelling the binge drinking crisis.
I want to be scandalised by under-age drinking, but I'm not. I started drinking at parties when I was 14 (don't tell Mum!). But it felt different back then, and less problematic. Yes, there were drunks at our parties. But most seemed sober compared to the teenagers at parties these days.
But were we really any different? Since 1984 the Health Department of Victoria has tracked drinking habits every three years in large populations of teenagers.
Geoff Munro, Director of the Community Alcohol Action Network, says the studies show the number of 16-17-year-old drinkers — those who had at least one drink in the last seven days — has been stable, hovering around 50% since the study began. The number of 12 to 15-year-old drinkers in the same category has dropped, from 31% to 23%. This reflects US trends going back to the 1970s.
But the next layer of the story is disturbing. Numbers of teenage boys and girls who drank at a hazardous level have increased dramatically — 16 to 17-year-olds from 29.5% to 43.5%, 12 to 15-year-olds from 11% to 22%. Increases among girls were the biggest.
Today, drinking habits are aided by advertising, as they were back then. But Sparkling Porphyry Pearl and Cold Duck were not advertised as sex aids. Compare this with the James Boag beer ad, recently scrapped for breaching the alcohol industry's advertising code because it linked drinking to sexual success. The ad shows a woman clutching a beer as she stares seductively at a man. A previous James Boag ad survived. In this one a woman sits with her legs spread, holding a beer and wearing only a coat and her underwear.
My generation's under-age drinking choices were also more limited. Today, spirits are pre-mixed with rich, colourful syrups that disguise the alcohol flavour so effectively that in a recent study by consumer group CHOICE, 24% of the 18 to 19-year-olds tested thought there was no alcohol in the drinks at all.
Munro says some of these drinks, dubbed 'alcopops', carry as much alcohol as 2.7 standard drinks.
'They are the fastest growing drinks on the market. Wine