Another year, another silly season. Over the past few weeks we have seen the inevitable reports of people getting drunk and behaving badly. During schoolies week it was images of teenagers celebrating the end of school by drinking too much. And on the eve of the new year, we will no doubt see more reports of people drinking to excess and creating a headache for society. Inevitably, anti-alcohol groups have responded as they always do - by attacking the product rather than the behaviour.
Whether it is schoolies, Christmas or New Year, the argument is that if we limit the availability or type of alcohol, increase the tax or close the pubs early, the problems associated with alcohol misuse will surely start to vanish.
These measures penalise most Australians who drink responsibly. They ignore the obvious if rather inconvenient truth: it is not what people drink but how they drink that results in drunkenness and the associated bad outcomes, including alcohol-related violence.
