There has never been a drug quite like alcohol. In small doses, it relieves anxiety and makes us more sociable. Unfortunately, as the dose increases, the effects are not so positive. Many of us become aggressive, or depressed, or rowdy or, simply, sick. Some become hopelessly addicted to the stuff.
Because it is a legal drug, each of us has to learn how to deal with alcohol. For many of us, wine becomes one of life's great pleasures, tempered by the ferocious prices of all but the most modest drops. But for young people, now, the problems of coming to terms with the grog are exacerbated by its widespread availability and an acceptance, even an expectation, of heavy drinking.
In its early days, Canberra was a dry town, and you had to go to Queanbeyan for a beer. But the city has long since abandoned its early temperance. When I first came here in the 1970s, I could not believe how freely available alcohol was. You could buy grog in supermarkets, which at that time was unheard of in Sydney, hardly a town noted for its abstinence. And there seemed to be a club in every suburb.
Since then, alcohol has become even more freely available. Pubs have proliferated in Civic, and after public service bedtime, are largely frequented by the young. Canberra has what is called a ''drinking culture'' among its young people. And they drink a lot, far more than we did at a similar age. Many of us have probably made up for it since, but that is not the point. Drinking habits established young are hard to shake.
As with other addictive activities, (gambling springs to mind), the state is full of ambivalence when it comes to drinking. Taxes on alcohol yield massive revenue to governments. The price of a middy of full-strength beer is about 35 per cent tax, a glass of wine more like 50 per cent. Clearly, no government wants to eliminate its drinkers by taxing them into sobriety. At the same time, drastic measures, such as random breath-testing, have proved necessary to stop drinkers eliminating themselves and others on the roads. Policy has both anticipated and reflected changing attitudes. I am old enough to remember the six-o'clock swill and the truly horrific ladies' lounges, which were the only places in most pubs where mixed drinking was allowed. Forcing pubs to shut at 6pm was supposed to send men home to their families. Whether their families were all that pleased to see them was another matter. At least they were not in the pub. Why, we wondered 30 years ago, could we not drink in a more civilised fashion, the way the Europeans did? Gradually, liquor licences became more flexible and easier to get, and licensees were able to open for longer hours. What was, perhaps, not realised sufficiently at the time was that deregulation (of whatever kind) is not a panacea. It produces some benefits, but also tends to recreate old problems in new forms. This is particularly the case where the society finds it difficult to handle the new freedoms.
Take the case of the changes to pub opening hours in Britain. When I first went to England in the 1970s, pubs kept quite bizarre hours. They opened around lunchtime, then shut, then opened again in the evening, then shut again. It turned out that this regime had been imposed in World War I in order to ensure greater discipline in the workforce.
Finally in 2005, the Blair government, in keeping with current thinking on the subject, deregulated opening hours. This was supposed to make drinking a more ''normal'' pastime. The idea was that responsible adults would exercise these new freedoms wisely. Instead, late night drinking became more and more popular. The streets of London and other large cities became a lot less safe, and a good deal nastier.
Somehow, drinking to render oneself comatose came to be seen as normal. We see this to some degree in Canberra, too. Responsible drinking means recruiting a designated driver and then proceeding to write yourself off. If you are a young person who does not enjoy this sort of thing, what do you do? Smile wanly as your companions become more and more incoherent? Or become a social recluse?
It has been argued that the best way to curb binge drinking among the young is by imposing new controls, such as restricting opening hours. Putting the genie of deregulation back into the bottle is not that easy, however. Where to re-regulate, and to what extent? Raising the legal drinking age to 21 has also been suggested. Apart from enforcement problems (the hotel industry has a hard enough time holding the line at 18), it will be difficult to turn the clock back.
Until the early 1970s, you had to be 21 before you could legally drink in a pub, but when the voting age was lowered to 18, the so-called drinking-age followed suit. Like many changes in our society at that time, the Vietnam war was responsible. If you could be conscripted at 18, it seemed unfair that you could not vote at 18. And if you could vote at 18, why not be allowed to purchase alcohol at 18, too?
That leaves raising the taxes on booze. The ill-fated alco-pops tax, even when it was in operation, was widely derided as a failure. Those wanting to drink, it was argued, would simply switch to other kinds of grog. Despite these reservations, a small net reduction in alcohol consumption did follow the tax hike.
There are other problems with raising taxes, most of them political. Desperate for revenue, the Rudd Government will no doubt increase alcohol taxes in next week's budget. But in tough times many voters will resent the effects on the price of their favourite tipple, all the more so if health issues are put forward as an additional rationale. Why, many drinkers will argue, should my mild indulgence increase dramatically in price, just because others cannot use alcohol responsibly?
So, where to next? If we can make cigarettes uncool, perhaps we can make drinking to excess uncool, too. But with cigarettes, we managed to ban advertising and along with advertising, most forms of sponsorship along the way. If the Rudd Government really wants to show its wisdom in this area, it should do the same with the demon drink.
Dr Jenny Stewart is associate professor of public policy at the University of Canberra.
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