The drinking season

The drinking season is upon us again. Around the world, alcohol deaths will spike again. Unless the perception about drinkers, who are seen to be smart, manly, fun-loving, cool, adventurous, etc., changes, alcohol will keep on winning. Here are the facts:

Alcohol is a slow, slowly but strongly addictive poison which kills about 3000/year in Australia, a great many more world-wide. Its social costs run into billions of dollars annually. But that's not my point.

Those who benefit from the sale of alcohol know this, yet they keep on producing, transporting, advertising and selling it. The only possible conclusion is that they care more about the money they make from their dealings with alcohol than about the deaths and social cost incurred by imbibing. When confronted with these facts they have only the drug dealer's lament to offer,

"if I don't do it, someone else will do it."
That's not my point, either. There will always be rotters.

How should we label the act of buying a slow poison from people who couldn't care less if their customers lived or died and these customers themselves? Stupid, ignorant, moronic, idiotic, all these come to mind. Not one of the labels traditionally associated with drinkers fits.

So, moron, if you want to drink yourself to death, by all means, go ahead, enrich those who couldn't care less about you and drink yourself out of a job, a family and into your grave. Try not to kill anyone else while doing so. Oh, I see, you'll be drunk and can't guarantee that you won't take anyone with you.

Let's all thank the authorities involved for this state of affairs. Many of them are drinkers and many of them make a pretty buck from alcohol.

Change the perception of a drinker from a cool hero to a fool and see alcohol consumption declining. Nobody likes to be a fool.

The alcohol non sequitur

More than three thousand people die yearly in Australia due to alcohol. That's just more than eight a day. Add to this the immeasurable social consequences of alcohol and you'd think the purveyors and producers of this harmful substance would be the pariahs of society. Not so. The booze barons are respected, very rich members of society even though their product causes several times the mortality and morbidity of illegal drugs. Compared to the booze barons, Carl Williams and his mates were very much in the junior league. The statistics may be some years old, but does anyone contend that the figures have significantly changed? The number of deaths dropped from 3000+ to maybe 1000, or 500, or 35?

Everybody knows alcohol causes death and destruction, even the booze barons. What can we logically deduce from the facts that they know this but still continue to manufacture and sell it? Obviously, they couldn't care less. The same goes for instances helping them to sell their slow poison by accepting alcohol advertisements - they know alcohol kills, too. I suppose one can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, fill up the four car garage without some suckers dying. As long as it pays.

One would expect the drinking public to have seen through this - they are enriching people who couldn't care less about them dying of the product they buy off these people. Of course, they shouldn't die quickly. They should drink heavily for twenty or thirty years before finally croaking. One would expect these booze hounds to say, 'no more, this is stupid'. I mean, everybody knows. But they don't say that. Do they deserve to die? After all, everybody knows. But still they keep on drinking.

And the attitude to drinking. If someone says he likes his beer he says it in such a way as if expecting credit for it. Instead he should be ashamed of himself for enriching people who kill 3000 a year in Australia. The whole thing doesn't make sense.

Now the booze hounds and booze barons will most likely say, yes, but cars and tobacco kill people, too. Road deaths are about half of what alcohol kills in Australia. And about 30% of those deaths are caused by alcohol. And in modern life the car is an absolute necessity. Alcohol is not. Tobacco kills several times the number alcohol kills. But does that make alcohol killing people right?

And all this takes place with the blessing of whichever government is in power. Shouldn't they be ashamed of themselves for allowing this? They are supposed to look after the people, even those too stupid to know any better.

Money, stupidity, utter disregard for the consequences of what they produce, sell, advertise, drink and allow, and what have we? What we have is that this will continue, even though it makes no sense at all.

Till next time.