The effects of the Alcopops tax (Family Planning in Gungahlin)

josh said :

> Yet the Federal government chooses to penalize these drinkers

oh for f***’s sake. if you’re going to make a ridiculous statement, at least spell it right. in any case, it’s not penalising anyone.. you’ll note people still have the choice, and can avoid this “penalty” by simply not purchasing the product.

want to avoid the “penalty”? then stop drinking. or, to quote a horde, “put up or shut up”.

A penalty is still a penalty even if one can avoid it. Perhaps your should not go around admonishing people for making ridiculous statements, when your own contains such a blatant internal contradiction.

Well, it looks like France is no longer a good example of a better option. Although comparing any country to the US is never a good idea there, 13 year olds are too busy trying not to have a “cap busted in their ass” by a “gangsta with a glock”, and don’t have time to drink, especially since smoking crack takes up so much of their time…

And in regard to drinking in France

The French drink one-and-a-half times more per capita than Americans and their death rate from liver cirrhosis is more than one-and-a-half times greater than that in the United States. According to WHO, France has the sixth highest adult per capita alcohol consumption in the world. Alcohol may be involved in nearly half of the deaths from road accidents, half of all homicides, and one-quarter of suicides, according to the French equivalent of the U.S. Institutes of Health.

French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits to wine and have increased their con­sumption fivefold since 1996, in part because 12- to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a new government “War Against Drugs” that includes alcohol.

http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/french_drinking.htm

From the Age 29/7/08

According to figures from the Australian Tax Office and Customs released by the Government yesterday, there had been a 23% decline in overall spirits drinking between April and June, with 54% fewer sales in alcopops and only a 7% increase in hard spirits sales.

Seems to be to be working.

Granny said :

Yes, sometimes I actually do go out to dinner and have three glasses of wine….

naughty!

At All Bar Nun for Norvan’s SIM challenge I was the one drinking coffee. So imagine my shock when I discovered that I have a binge drinking problem!

Yes, sometimes I actually do go out to dinner and have three glasses of wine….

johnboy said :

I’m pretty sure Jesus not only turned water into wine to keep a party going (no doubt contributing to binge drinking in 1st century palestine), but while doing so was dodging excise.

beats the hell out of BYO, though.

Yeah, but that was wine not Alcopops. And I’m sure that the 13 year old that was getting married wasn’t involved in the drinking….

I’m pretty sure Jesus not only turned water into wine to keep a party going (no doubt contributing to binge drinking in 1st century palestine), but while doing so was dodging excise.

After much consideration, Hell is almost certainly a internet forum….

fnaah said :

p1, I thought it was funny. And there’s a fair bit of truth in the argument.

Aussiegal, your threats of damnation don’t really scare people who don’t believe in hell, but feel free to cast me down with Beelzebub and all his little wizards while you’re at it. If hell exists, we’ll be down there fornicating and gambling and drinking and playing loud music and blaspheming for all eternity while you try not to think about the fun you should have had on earth while you had a chance.

you seem to think that hell is warm?

canberra must be hell in summer.

or hell in winter.

always thought that hell is other people….