If you start adding in that alcohol made the crime victim more vulnerable (with a sober assailant), how far are you from also adding in the “social costs” of dressing too provocatively? All kinds of factors make a victim more attractive to an assailant; being drunk is only one. How about the “social costs” of walking down dark alleys at night alone? It gets a bit absurd.

Getstaffed said
Not are great arguement there really. If a crime is committed against someone walking home from a library should we close libraries early?

O.K. Looks like I need to spell it out….

Before you make an objective decision you have to cost it out – what are the profits, what are the losses. The arguement in the editorial is that emotional benefits should be considered a profit (i.e. that not all alcohol consumption is a loss because it can make you feel good). My two points were that
a) emotional detriments should be considered a loss if we are going to include emotional benefits as a profit and
b) how do you objectively measure emotional benefits and emotional detriments anyway.

If you want to measure the emotional benefits of drinking, how do you measure the emotional detriments of drinking? How many nights of “good times” do you have to have in order to counter for the emotional impact on a women you got raped while walking home from the pub.

Not are great arguement there really. If a crime is committed against someone walking home from a library should we close libraries early?

However in Mr Keys thinking and actions it is that a small % of parents who bash their kids, so what does he do, he nails all parents without dealing to the offenders.

By that same thinking most domestic violence involves alcohol and being drunk so it makes sense according to National and Mr Key to ban everyone being drunk to protect the few who are being attacked and help deal to the offenders.
yes?

That said how do you quantify what a drunk does to those around them in public, to be abnoxious and rude isn’t a crime but it sure can ruin someone’s evening.
It would also directly deal to drunk driving too so we get double benefits. (personally think limit should be 0).

Nah I’m for nanny state on this one, no drunk in public. simple and it fits National rationale and means we deal to the druken binging attitude prevelant in society and assisted by media and celebrity.
It is easy to check to, breath and blood tests after you’ve been arrested for disorderly or offensive behaviour.

1st time overnight in cells and go before the magistrate the next weekday morning with fine and alcohol counseling.
2nd time overnight and go before magistrate next day, have to reapply for firearms and driving licences.
3rd time overnight, then automatic 21 days in jail suspended, alcohol counseling and on probation for 3yrs, lose liscences fully not just reapply.
thereafter straight to jail.

Drink driving should be
1st time – come before magistrate next day license suspended and resit driving and firearm licences and counseling.
2nd time – jail 21 days immediate then alcohol counseling, lose liscences.
3rd time – 3 months in jail immediate, banned from driving.

Honestly do you think if society treated drink driving and being drunk in public like this, people might take it seriously?
They don’t right now, all I see is excuses and damage needlessly caused.
if anything it is lauded and laughed at, so I totally understand the frustration of alcoholics anonymous and alac and others.

binge drinking is but a pointer to a greater public malaise.

If you want to measure the emotional benefits of drinking, how do you measure the emotional detriments of drinking? How many nights of “good times” do you have to have in order to counter for the emotional impact on a women you got raped while walking home from the pub.

Crampton – the old joke around golf is that if a storm comes over, pull out a 1-iron and hold it up, because even God can’t hit a 1-iron

Read it. http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/2009/10/whos-war-on-alcohol.html . Be ready.

Didnt they understand I kept them employed!

The ‘Health’ industry is actually a sickness industry.
If they were successful at keeping everyone healthly they would be out of their highly paid jobs!

an unrelated example is things like the regulations put in place for school swimming pools. I grew up learning to swim in my primary school’s pool during the 1980s – we’d buy a key for the summer, and that would mean that we could go and use the pool between certain hours (daytime), supervised by parents or other adults. So I learned to swim, had fun with friends, was active and outside, all good things, etc…

Now I understand that over the past 10 years or so, regulations on school swimming pools have been ramped up and up and up to the point where many no longer provide such a service, because it is simply too costly to have their school swimmig pools operating, due to the constant pH testing of the water and other things that must be done (several times a day, apparently, in some cases) to ensure the water is ’safe’ to swim in. Now each of the ’safety’ changes brought in was probably completely good-intentioned, and in some ways inarguable at the time (how could anyone argue against testing the water regularly to ensure a kid isn’t going to get some nasty bug?? they would have said)…

But the thing is, I don’t remember a tonne (or really any) of my classmates getting sick or dying from the swimming pool water. And without the swimming pool, we would have been less active, less healthy, less social, and at more risk of drowning and plenty of other negative things as we got older… there are tonnes of detrimental flow-on effects, but these seem to often be overlooked (or left unmeasured, because they may be hard to measure) when such restrictive safety practices are brought in…

In the kingdom of the health professionals, the only reputable sport is golf.

The last time I hit a golf ball, Boxing Day 1996 I think, a health professional benefited as the woman that got hit between the eyes provided them with some business.

The same can be said for pseudoephedrine.. well any drug in fact.

Getstaffed, I totally agree. If governments limited themselves to protecting people from theft, violence, fraud, injury from others stupidity and opened themselves to the idea of individual liability/responsibility then we would be much better of.

there is a point where trying to save us from ourselves costs more than its worth

I’m not sure that’s the underlying objective – even if it’s the stated one. The real reason for all these so-called safety laws is liability transfer. It all starts when individuals reject the notion of them taking responsibility for how they treat others, and instead look to transfer any blame for harm they cause (or could be accused of causing) onto other third parties.

The result is a cascade of responsibility transfers with each party protecting themselves from some/all, and then transferring the rest. That this process limits the freedom and/or enjoyment of others is just lost in the ass covering.