Posts Tagged ‘alcohol’

Not all research is created equal

Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, January 17th, 2016 - 193 comments

A recent “research” report on alcohol, funded by brewing company Lion, has been in the news lately. Sadly, not everything that purports to be research is honest research.

Thanks for the Piss, Collins.

Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, April 26th, 2014 - 108 comments

Karol has already mentioned this in her post from this morning. But in the interests of splitting milk from alcohol…

Conscience votes

Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, August 28th, 2012 - 91 comments

Two high-profile conscience votes are coming up in Parliament over the next two days. It will be interesting to see the breakdown of who votes which way on the issues. But the level of malice expressed by some of those opposed to marriage equality is disturbing.

Govt opts for show over substance on alcohol

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, August 24th, 2010 - 49 comments

The government’s alcohol reforms are so typical of this government: criminalise someone to be seen to be doing something, while ignoring the root causes of the problem. This is a government that would rather make a criminal of a good parent who lets their son’s mate have a beer at a BBQ than make it harder for booze barons to hook kids into drinking.

Raise the drinking age

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, July 1st, 2010 - 103 comments

I was neutral in the debate on lowering the drinking age back in 1999. There were arguments on both sides. But ten years later it is clear that the experiment has failed. There have been several recent calls to raise the drinking age and take other effective action to restrict the damage that alcohol causes in NZ. Come on Key – show some leadership.

Henare’s bigoted attack on poor proven false

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, May 16th, 2010 - 61 comments

Tau Henare is opposing Labour’s suggested policy of taking GST off fruit and vegetables saying “If they can’t afford to buy a lettuce or a tomato then they should give up the drink and the smokes,” and “It’s a well-known fact that poor people, if they don’t have enough money, will buy smokes and not bread.” Really? Well, it took two minutes checking on the Stats’ website to prove him wrong.

Fags bad, piss good

Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, April 29th, 2010 - 11 comments

Here’s a great interview by RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan with Professor Doug Sellman, Director of the National Addiction Centre, on Government’s bizarre inconsistency in raising the price of fags to discourage consumption while not raising the price of alcohol – despite its alleged interest in addressing alcohol abuse. Sellman also has some interesting things to say about […]

Conscience and alcodollars

Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, April 28th, 2010 - 37 comments

How does the government decide which are good drugs and which are bad?

And how much does it have to do with big money?

Campbell and McCarten on McKay

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, March 30th, 2010 - 17 comments

The latest piece from the ever excellent Gordon Campbell has a go at the beat up of North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams. Towards the end he raises some interesting points about Auckland’s new boss.