That " Drinking Age " question !

Pressure is building to raise the legal drinking age in Australia from the present eighteen - to twenty-one !  TV viewers are sick and tired of the relentless images of drunken young patrons brawling in the streets outside nightclubs, and sporting events ruined by hooligan behaviour.

Few seem to remember that for three quarters of the last century the legal drinking age in this country was twenty-one.    That all changed in 1974 when we became involved in an Asian war and young men were subjected to conscription under the terms of what was called   " National Service ".

It seemed incongruous that at age eighteen, citizens were deemed too immature to cast a vote to select the government and not permitted to buy or drink alcohol, but could be forcibly taken into the army, issued a gun and sent overseas to fight a war.   Consequently, the " Age of Majority " was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen.

Australia was a very different place back in 1974.   The pubs opened at ten in the morning and closed at ten in the evening.  There was no Sunday trading in most states, and night clubs were a phenomenon of the entertainment cluster in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Today, every country town has late trading and at least one venue calls itself a " night club " and provides what is dubiously called " entertainment " until the wee small hours.   It seems that the prime function of these places is to make the proprietors rich by serving as much alcohol as the patrons can possibly ingest - and turfing them loose on an unsuspecting public when the doors finally close.

It may be possible to legally turn back the clock on the drinking age, but an act of parliament does not automatically ensure that such a law will be obeyed.  This is a more rebellious age and the alcohol industry is both rich and powerful, and politicians curb it at their peril.   There seems a certain timidity in applying the measures that have brought results in Newcastle to implementation in the rest of the state - and clearly any move to restrict access to alcohol will meet stiff resistance from the alcohol lobby.

Most reasonable people would agree that the old " ten am to ten pm " opening hours were probably a little too restrictive, but do we really need what are nothing more than " alcohol swills " serving patrons until three in the morning - and some not closing at all ?    Would it be unreasonable if the serving of alcohol stopped  at an earlier hour - statewide ?

We are never going to eliminate the damage does by excess drinking of alcohol.  The best we can achieve is to moderate the outcome by imposing reasonable restrictions on supply, hours of service - and strict policing on under age access.  It is a fact of life that much of the problem we are facing comes from young people under the present legal age of eighteen getting their hands on alcohol and drinking to excess.

The other factor exacerbating the problem, is the examples set by the various sporting codes.   Sporting hero's paid big money set a terrible example and while the clubs profess to clamp down, a " nudge and wink " approach seems to condone the drinking problem.    Only when offending players are " out " for the rest of the season and lose the huge money they earn will we see a change of attitude come into effect.

This is not a problem that needs a sledge hammer approach.    Careful fine tuning can chip away at the problem and bring results - but that will require the politicians to have the stamina to stand up to the attack they will endure from the powerful alcohol lobby.   So far, they seem to lack that courage !