Purchase age not drinking age
June 15th, 2011 at 10:00 am by David FarrarGod it annoys me when people go on about the purchase age for alcohol, and confuse it with a drinking age.
The latest is the Chair of Kings.
Let us be very clear. NZ has no drinking age at present. It is absolutely legal for 12 year olds to drink spirits. I think this is crazy, and why I support there being a drinking age. And at present it is also legal for an adult to give a 12 year old a bottle of spirits.
The Government’s proposals go part of the way towards having a drinking age. They make it illegal to supply alcohol to someone under 18 without parental consent. However they don’t make the actual consumption of alcohol without consent an offence.
The purchase age is the age at which you can purchase alcohol. It is currently 18. When a 16 or 17 year old gets into trouble with alcohol, it has nothing to do with the purchase age and everything to do with the lack of a drinking age – or at the least the lack of a law preventing supply to those under 18.
What happened at Kings has nothing to do with the purchase age of alcohol being 18. The dead boy is aged 17. We won’t know until the Coroner reports what happened that night, but I have heard from multiple people that this was not primarily an alcohol issue. I am amazed the Chair of Kings is raising what is arguably a red herring.
Related posts:
- Again why a drinking age not an incresed purchase age is needed
- Hopeful common sense on youth drinking
- Keep it 18 reason #2
- The split purchase age
June 15th, 2011 at 10:12 am
It is absolutely legal for 12 year olds to drink spirits. I think this is crazy, and why I support there being a drinking age.
It doesn’t matter. No 12 year old with access to spirits and who is permitted to be in a position to drink them has guardians that respect the law.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 10:19 am
There is a drinking age in Australia. 18 I think, and parents may not supply alcohol to their underaged children. Not sure that this is a big issue here, and we would probably not see a big problem with parents supplying their children in their own homes. Where it becomes an issues is when adults supply alcohol to unrelated minors (kids’ friends, etc). Is it presently an offence for someone aged under 18 to be in possession of alcohol, say out on the street with some RTDs given to them by a mate’s parent?
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 10:23 am
I have a 15 year old son with whom I share a beer after a hard day’s work or when we go out to dinner at a restaurant. What is wrong with that? We don’t drink ten jugs – we have a bottle and sit on the verandah and complain about how sore we are from wood chopping or whatever the task was. The government can get fucked – I will break that law until he turns whatever the drinking age is.
[DPF: Nothing wrong with that, but the law currently allows your 15 year old to be given a bottle of spirits from a mate and drink it without parental knowledge or supervision]
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 10:41 am
I’d hate to see the law changed so that parents were not allowed to give kids small amounts of alcohol with meals. My kids were allowed heavily watered wine with dinner from the age of about 7. Think 150ml water and 20ml wine to start with. That, combined with sneering at drunks and referring to them as losers, did the trick, we had no real problems with them. They both got good and pissed once each, but didn’t repeat the exercise.
[DPF: A drinking age would have an exemption for parental supervision]
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 10:57 am
As a crusader against knee-jerk reactions in the field of abuse of alcohol that always penalize the law abiding and have an insignificant effect on the real target I concur with the sentiment of the post.
Vote:It seems that attacking the supplier, the responsible adult, and the availability and price are all just too easy when the drinker is the only target that should be in the sights.
Spare me the BS about risk taking, peer pressure, ignorance and all the other sidesteps that Arron Cruden would be proud of, the problems around alcohol abuse by any demographic are lack of personal responsibility by the drinker, you know, the person who actually puts it in their mouth and swallows it.
Right and wrong, good and bad behavior, accountability, acceptable and unacceptable, simple really.
Instead we have stings, evidence gathering, prosecutions, demonising of suppliers while the drunks are made safe and left out there to go again as soon as circumstances allow, free of any sanction.
June 15th, 2011 at 10:59 am
I’m no expert on this, but my understanding is that the younger you start children drinking the more likely they are to have problems with drinking, which is the opposite to the conventional wisdom (start children drinking in a civilised manner and they will have no trouble with drink). We do have to examine our strongly held beliefs with reference to the evidence, and this would appear to be a case where many of us have the wrong end of the stick, hard as that may be to take.
Our history tells us, and the bottle stores and pubs that regularly get caught out is evidence, that word gets out pretty fast when an outlet will sell alcohol to the under age or obviously fake IDs and youngsters will buy booze there. To say that the purchase age has nothing to do with youngsters drinking at 16 & 17 can’t be true. I don’t support raising the age, but it’s clear to me that when the age dropped from 20 to 18 unscrupulous sellers sold to even younger people and it still goes on because the enforcement is so crappy.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 11:00 am
What I am really interested in is whether the pre-ball function at the function centre actually had a liquour licence at all or for that event. My understanding is that it’s illegal for a licencee to serve to anyone under 18 (which is different to sell) and the “professional” barman ought to have known that.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
If what we read in the press is correct and that certainly can be a challenge from time to time Kings College asked parents not to supply alcohol to students pre ball. If this is correct, what was Norgate thinking. This goes beyond supplying a few kids with a beer at home, it looks like an organized pre ball function with alcohol on tap including the obligatory barman to serve it up. Given the school’s request re alcohol surely this is a case if a parent actively giving the school the digital salute and encouraging the kids to do the same. It may on the face of it seem harmless enough at the time but it is this sort of tragic event that brings the issues into sharp focus.
In reality this pre ball function has little to do directly with the tragedy for the Gaynor family but it speaks volumes for the culture that the school is combating.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Speech: Youth & Binge Drinking (March 2011)
Please feel free to distribute to anyone who may find the following document useful.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B1KojhigB2E7MDBmOWI3MmYtZThlYi00MDEzLTk2NWMtYzRkMGU4NGI1OTAy&hl=en
Steve Taylor (B. Couns., B. Alc. D.S.)
Vote:Director,
24-7 Ltd
http://www.24-7.org.nz
June 15th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I thought prohibition had already been demonstrated to be an abject failure.
Most of us are able to consume alcohol without being criminals.
If you want to change society and remove alcohol, you have to make us all criminals first.
So, society being what it is, and containing alcohol, we need to prepare kids for that.
Banning any contact with alcohol until they are 18 is simply not going to do that. The French have already demonstrated how it can be done.
Otherwise, go live in Saudi Arabia.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
ADC:
You may wish to read the above speech – I believe I deal quite nicely with the myth of the “sophisticated European drinking culture”.
The French have Cirrhosis of the liver stats 4 -5 x that of New Zealand.
Delayed onset and discouraging social supply, via raising the age, raising the price, decreasing the BAL, decreasing advertising, enforcing licencing, imposing sanctions on supply to minors, and increasing treatment opportunities, is a better path towards sorting this stuff out.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
that doesn’t explain why I should be criminalised to avoid sorting out other people’s inability to self-moderate.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
“I am amazed the Chair of Kings is raising what is arguably a red herring.”
You are amazed that the Chair of Kings is trying to create an impression that this a wider legal issue and not something to do with the drink and drugs culture of the Kings students and their parents?
I thought you had something to do with National party spin? Surely, you can identify somebody else’s spin.
Vote:June 15th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Sorry but I’m over having my liberties messed with because some fucking kid overdoses…too bad,how sad move on.
Vote: