Alcohol Review

Alcohol understanding for all

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Try out some alcohol policies at home

Policies and individual choices are normally seen as completely separate, but in reality they merge. So why not ring in the New Year by road-testing some effective alcohol strategies at home?

We all set some rules, or policies, for our homes, for example. Few let outdoor shoes go beyond a certain threshold. Weaponry, road vehicles, fire, smoke and harmful chemicals also typically have their perimeters.

These are not prohibitions. They are regulations. By crossing borders we can have access to all of the things verboten in some places. Out there is a target-shooting, tanker driver who only smokes when scrubbed up, unarmed on the veranda.

The regulatory systems of our private lives often operate on the basis of unwritten policies picked up from parents, partners, and common sense. They offer an easy way to keep a safe, livable and inexpensive environment. 

These policies are typically adopted and applied without any democratic mandate. But we will also, sometimes, decide to set new policies, often through a process of thought, negotiation and compromise.

So why not consider adding evidence-based alcohol policies to the mix. We might take, for instance, government policies reckoned to curb harm at a population level as a starting point: increase the price, and reduce availability and marketing.

A few calculations might allow us to set a minimum unit price. This we might do by identifying products which are below it. Or we might levy a alcohol per unit “tax”, setting aside revenue for household running costs and infrastructure.

Implementation of these might be complicated. Perhaps an easier option would be reducing alcohol availability. We might bar keeping alcohol at home; Or to limit the stockpile; Or not put what we have in the fridge; Or, maybe, not to buy online. 

Limiting home availability would have a knock-on effect. It bumps up the price of alcohol at home, imposing on inhabitants the cost of leaving the house to buy it. This also gives us a chance for second thoughts. 

Reducing marketing exposure is trickier, because alcohol advertising targets us without our consent. But we can reduce it, by putting alcohol brands out of sight at home. We can also filter some online ads. And we can try to avoid alcohol retail.

Harmful levels of drinking are best addressed with the aid of medical advice. But making our own environments less alcohol loaded makes low-risk drinking the easy option. And home drinking is the source of the bulk of alcohol harm.

We all set and live by policies to create environments which are safe and best serve our needs. We need politicians to do this for us in environments we share. ■

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Australia’s system of taxing alcohol is ‘incoherent’, but our research suggests a single tax rate isn’t the answer

by Ou Yang, The University of Melbourne and Preety Pratima Srivastava, RMIT University

The best word to describe the way Australia taxes alcoholic drinks is “incoherent”.

It was the word used by the 2010 Henry Tax Review to describe a system in which some wine effectively faces no alcohol tax, expensive wine is taxed heavily and cask wine lightly, beer (but not wine) is taxed by alcohol content, brandy is taxed less than other spirits, and cider is taxed differently to beer.

Industry calculations suggest cask wine is taxed at as little as six cents per standard drink, mid-price wine at 26 cents, bottled beer at 56 cents, and spirits at $1.24.

And yet it is cask wine that is often said to do the most damage.

The Henry Review recommended taxing all drinks containing more than a small amount of alcohol at the same rate per unit of alcohol, regardless of type. It was a recommendation backed by specialists in Australia’s tax system.

Implicit, and largely unexamined, in these recommendations is the assumption that alcohol does the same damage in whatever form it is taken.

Our new study, linking drinkers’ risky behaviours to the types of alcoholic beverages they mostly consume, finds this isn’t so.

Damage depends on the type of drink

Using data from six waves of an Australian recreational drug survey, we find that regular-strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a can rank among the highest in their links to both drink-driving and hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours.

Mid-range are mid-strength beer, cask wine, and bottled spirits and liqueurs.

At the bottom are low-strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a bottle, which have the weakest links to risky and abusive behaviours when intoxicated.

Probability of drink driving, by age and beverage type

RSB = Regular-Strength Beer; LSB = Low-Strength Beer; MSB = Mid-Strength Beer; BW = Bottled Wine; FW = Fortified Wine; CW = Cask Wine; PMSC = Pre-Mixed Spirits in a Can; PMSB = Pre-Mixed Spirits in a Bottle; BS = Bottled Spirits and Liqueurs.
Source: Economic Record

Some of the relationships vary with the type of damage. While bottled wine is linked to a moderate to high probability of drink-driving, it is also linked to a low probability of hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours.

Pre-mixed spirits in a bottle are related to a low probability of both drink driving and hazardous, disturbing and abusive behaviours. But when account is taken of the gender of the drinkers (so-called alcopops are typically drunk by females), we find them no longer as safe.

Probability of hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviour

RSB = Regular-Strength Beer; LSB = Low-Strength Beer; MSB = Mid-Strength Beer; BW = Bottled Wine; FW = Fortified Wine; CW = Cask Wine; PMSC = Pre-Mixed Spirits in a Can; PMSB = Pre-Mixed Spirits in a Bottle; BS = Bottled Spirits and Liqueurs.
Source: Economic Record

Our study suggests that Australia’s haphazard system of taxing alcohol might have got some things right. Beer, which is typically taxed more highly than wine, seems to do more damage.

But it has got some things wrong. Cask wine appears to be significantly undertaxed relative to the damage it does.

More broadly, our findings suggest that if alcohol is to be taxed according to the damage it does, the tax system we adopt will need to be more complicated than a single rate for every unit of alcohol regardless of the form in which it comes. ■The Conversation

Note: Ou Yang, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne and Preety Pratima Srivastava, Senior Lecturer, RMIT University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.