Dying for a Drink

6 8 | N O R T H & S O U T H | j a n u a r y 2 0 1 0

Cameron Hawkins didn’t intend to get on the turps the night he accidentally drank himself to death. It was a Saturday, but the horti culture student had a shift at the Mr Apple

packing shed the next day and wanted an early night.

He even headed to bed for a nap around 8pm, but when he heard his mates partying, got up and joined in.

+ Health

donna chisholm is north & south’s editor-at-large.

aAs the Law Commission

considers how to curb the country’s booze culture, Donna

CHisHolm tells the story of four young men who didn’t survive a

night of drinking – and asks what, if any, law changes might have

saveD tHeir lives.

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hazardously than others the same age.The deaths of Hawkins, Cranswick and

Neil were mentioned anonymously in the weighty Law Commission paper Alcohol in our Lives, released last July, which proposed a raft of options to limit the harm New Zealanders do every day by drinking too much. Among them were price increases and raising the purchase age for off-licence liquor. The commission heard submissions on the report for three months in 2009 and its final recommendations will be released in March. They look likely to lead to the biggest shakeup to our liquor laws since they were liberalised in 1989.

For the families of these young men, change will come too late. Yes, their sons were foolhardy, they say – of course they shouldn’t have drunk so much – but the culpability is not theirs alone.

CAM E RON HAWKI NSborn February 23, 1989. Died Hawke’s bay,

march 2, 2008.

Sharemilkers Shona and Mark Hawkins had been “hard-out” drinkers in their youth but gave up when they joined the Salvation Army about 10 years ago. Cameron,

one of six children, was a “junior soldier” in the army until he converted to Catholicism at 17. His parents had repeatedly warned him of the perils of drinking. “By the time I was 26, I’d buried 13 of my mates and most of them were from alcohol – four in one crash,” says Mark.

Shona and Mark asked Cameron’s friends to talk to North & South about the night Cameron died in the hope it might save another young person from the same fate.

The flatmates, now aged 20 and 21, said Cameron started the night on beers and Woodstock ready-to-drink (RTD) bourbons but later moved on to a concoction they called Jake the Muss – a mix of beer, Bacardi, Everglades liqueurs and Jim Beam. Cameron was sculling the lethal brew from his favourite gimmicky Coke glass which flashed when you pushed the button on the bottom. He must have had about three of them, says Lucas, but it was hard to keep track.

The friends admit this was a boozy flat. Food was often sacrificed for drink, and they’d survive on takeaway McDonald’s and Burger King and supermarket meat patties. “We had heaps of top-shelf stuff,” says Lucas. “Our fridge was always full of bottles: Woodstocks mainly. There was Jim Beam,

Cameron Hawkins, Daniel Hansman, Willy Cranswick and “Neil” [Neil’s family asked that North & South respect their privacy by not publishing

their surname.] Four young men. All tertiary students. All

kids from provincial centres living away from home for the first time. All dead from alcohol.

But these were not stereotypical booze deaths. These kids didn’t get into a car and drive. They didn’t get violent. They broke no laws. But they all got drunk and died.

Hawkins, who attended Napier’s Eastern Institute of Technology, and Neil, a Canterbury University science student, drank so much it seems they just keeled over and dropped dead. Hansman fell off the wharf near Wellington’s overseas terminal and drowned. Cranswick was playing bull-rush in a student bar in Palmerston North and hit his head on someone’s knee. No one at the pub did anything to help and he died of an undiagnosed brain bleed the next day.

These were good boys, among our brightest and best – university students with big dreams, high hopes and a love of life, adored by their families, cherished by their friends.

And each of them a victim of the many and varied ways in which alcohol is targeted at youth – particularly university students who, the research shows, drink more

Saturday nights usually signalled party time in the sociable Taradale flat he had moved into with his best friends Lucas Holmberg, Matt Hellyer and Stephanie Brenchley only a few weeks earlier. They’d crack open the Woodstocks and Tuis early in the evening and be pleasantly cut by the time they cabbed into town for happy hour at the Havelock Tavern at 11pm, when Midori Illusions were only $7.50, half-price. But this night – a balmy end-of-summer evening – they’d got on the booze early, there was plenty left still, and nobody could really be bothered.

It was cheaper to stay home, too. The Taradale bottle store always gave them good deals on the Woodstock bourbon and cokes – $25 for 18 – and loads of free, branded stuff like Frisbees, jandals and keychains. “They knew me and Cam by name,” says Lucas, “so they often did specials just for us. We got two-for-one deals.”

The Taradale flatmates weren’t the only ones getting pissed that night. As they partied around the stereo, they could hear the strains of Jimmy Barnes and Tom Jones performing to a much wealthier crowd at the Mission Vineyard concert just a kilometre away – an evening one reviewer would describe as a booze fest.

By the time that the Mission crowd had dispersed around midnight, paramedics were trying to revive Cameron Hawkins. But by 3am, he was dead. He had just turned 19.

Researchers estimate the “lethal dose” is about 30 standard drinks, although some die with less booze on board or survive with much more. Cameron’s blood alcohol level was 396mg per 100ml of blood – almost five times the legal driving limit.

Above: Cameron Hawkins.

“She said, ‘Here, Cam won this; he deserves this.’”

She knew it was offered with love but, she says, “I just wanted to grab it and throw it against the wall in that split second. All I thought was, ‘That’s robbed me of my son. That’s taken my son.’”

been fatal even at 300-350mg.Despite the fact the flatmates were stocking

their fridge with cheap alcohol, they believe higher prices wouldn’t have significantly cut their intake.

North & South asked them if any warnings could have changed the outcome.

Said Stephanie: “No, absolutely nothing. I reckon we would have just been, ‘No, that won’t happen to us.’”

Lucas: “No, it won’t hit [other young adults] until it hits them like it hit us.”

They don’t drink as much now, though Lucas admits he sometimes gets wasted “to take away the pain”.

Shona Hawkins says when she went back to the Taradale flat to pick up her dead son’s clothes, a friend of the flatmates gave her the wrestling belt.

N O R T H & S O U T H | j a n u a r y 2 0 1 0 | 7 1

absinthe, Johnny Walker... I would spend $60 to $70 a week on alcohol. I spent more than Cam because I drank more – Cam was more into saving money but I didn’t care if I saved at that time.”

While the others began drinking earlier that day – “We were half-cut by the time he started” – Cameron seemed unintentionally to be playing catch-up after he joined them. “I don’t think he wanted me to drink alone,” says Lucas. “And one led to another and another.”

The flatmates were avid fans of WWE wrestling and, on big drinking nights, they’d award a wrestling belt to the last man standing. “It wasn’t on the line that night, but when he was really wasted, Cameron said he wanted to win the belt.”

At 11.30, Cameron, happy but slurring, got up off the sofa and fell over, hitting the TV on the way down. Lucas, Matt and another flatmate, James, lifted him to his feet and carried him to bed where they put him in the recovery position with a bucket nearby. They’d never seen their friend so drunk and, though tipsy themselves, were sufficiently worried to check him every few minutes.

Just after midnight, Lucas found Cameron un conscious with his lips dark blue and his tongue badly swollen. A river of vomit poured out when they opened his mouth.

As Stephanie called an ambulance, Matt and Lucas began CPR while James tried the Heimlich manoeuvre. Paramedics tried for more than two hours to bring Cameron Hawkins back to life with electric shocks and adrenalin.

At the sound of the flatlining heart monitor, a devastated Matt Hellyer threw a chair at the wall and screamed.

shona and mark Hawkins got the news when Mark was bringing in the second herd for milking on the farm at Reporoa. Police told him Cameron had choked. The Hawkins didn’t find out how much alcohol was involved until weeks later.

Lucas Holmberg says before his best mate died, he’d thought the only way alcohol killed kids his age was through drink-driving. That’s why they always used a sober driver.

They had no idea that alcohol in high doses could itself be a killer. Researchers estimate the “lethal dose” is about 30 standard drinks, although some die with less booze on board or survive with much more.

Cameron’s blood-alcohol level was 396mg per 100ml of blood – almost five times the legal driving limit. His intake could have

At 11.30, Cameron, happy but slurring, got up off the sofa and fell over, hitting the TV on the way down.

Top: Cameron’s flatmates Lucas Holmberg (left), Matt Hellyer and Stephanie Brenchley. Above: Cameron’s parents, Mark and Shona Hawkins.

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play pool at the Rockpool Bar on Hereford St. At 11.40pm, just before leaving for town, Neil was so drunk he fell off a chair and was helped to the couch, but said he was fine. Ten minutes later, just like Cameron Hawkins, he got up from the couch, and fell over.

Within seconds, his friends realised some-thing was terribly wrong – Neil was vomiting but his jaw was clamped tightly shut and they were unable to clear his airway.

Paramedics began CPR and Neil was admitted to Christchurch Hospital’s intensive-care unit, where his blood-alcohol level was only marginally lower than Cameron’s, at 370mg. He died two days later.

Neil’s parents said their son was not usually a heavy drinker but enjoyed socialising with friends. Although the coroner referred his report on Neil’s death to the Alcohol Advisory Council, the Law Commission and Minister of Justice as “an extreme example of the consequences of alcohol abuse”, his parents said a pathologist gave evidence Neil may have had an under lying heart condition.

“The loss of our son is unbearable for us,” they said in a statement to North & South. “The truly sad thing is that the choices made by these young people who have died are no different than those made by many other young and not-so-young people every day in New Zealand. Alcohol is an accepted killer drug in our society. Young people do not seem to connect the seriousness of the effects of alcohol and its ability to kill or seriously harm them. For most of them, it will seldom become an issue, but our son paid the ultimate price.”

They said while media emphasised the risks of drink-driving, education needed to focus on drinkers being responsible all the time, not just when driving.

“Many young people do not drink heavily at all, but on isolated occasions they become binge drinkers. On this day, the alcohol was readily available at the race meeting from late morning and purchased from the supermarket.”

New Zealand needed to change its attitude to alcohol, they said.

“We will never be able to accept the prem-ature death of our lovely son. He was con-siderate and thoughtful, quietly spoken and so interested in everything concerning the world. Our memories of him are precious, and we grieve for him, the loss of his future, the wonderful potential and opportunities of every kind ahead for him, and simply his presence.”

“ NE I L”born november 1984. Died Christchurch,

september 23, 2008.

Six months after Cameron Hawkins died, Canterbury University science student Neil – a fit but lightly built 23-year-old – lost his life in strikingly similar circum-

stances. Like Cameron, Neil had been drinking heavily, but over a much longer period; he and his friends had attended the “students’ day” at the Riccarton races before continuing to drink at the home of his childhood friend Chris.

The Canterbury Jockey Club cancelled students’ day in September 2009 after disorderly behaviour by alcohol-fuelled students in 2008 – although hundreds turned up anyway to honour the tradition started in the late 1990s. In those days, the club offered students entry to the course, food and all the beer and wine they could drink for $50. By 2008, however, when numbers swelled to more than 1000, the ticket price fell to $45 and free drinks were capped at three.

Neil’s inquest heard everyone was in high spirits and dressed for the occasion; he’d borrowed a suit for the day. “It was going to be a good day. The plan was to have a few drinks and check out a few girls, basically have a good time,” one friend told the coroner. “There were no negatives – everyone was just out to have a good time.”

They bought two three-litre casks of red wine from the Riccarton Mall Pak ’n’ Save on the way, and drank it mixed with Coke.

Neil’s mate Charles said they didn’t eat anything at the races, and Neil was also drinking beer. He was photographed holding up a can of Speight’s.

Neil and his friends had done the right thing by getting a sober driver to pick them up from the races about 4pm. On the way home, they stopped at the Riccarton Rd Countdown and picked up a 12-pack of Corona beer, and they still had the remains of the red wine.

Around 10pm, despite being very drunk, Neil walked to a nearby Burger King for takeaways. One friend said no one that night seemed particularly intoxicated and Neil, while “past tipsy” was “not offensively drunk”. “He wasn’t slurring his words or stumbling into anything that I noticed.”

What happened next shows how shockingly quickly alcohol can shut down the body.

Just before 11pm, Neil was sitting in a friend’s car outside Chris’s flat. At 11pm, they came inside to get ready to go into town to


“It was going to be a good day. The plan was

to have a few drinks and check out a few

girls, basically have a good time,” one friend

told the coroner.

Drinking in New Zealand

About 1000 people a year die of alcohol-related causes – about half because of accidents and a quarter from alcohol-related cancers.

Since July 2007, 16 New Zealanders with no history of alcoholism have died of alcohol toxicity from a drinking binge.

Waikato coroner Peter Ryan said he had four inquests in six months in 2008 in which people had drunk themselves to death. In September 2009, there was another – a 24-year-old man who’d died with a blood- alcohol level of 330mg, more than four times the legal driving limit.

“These seem to be ordinary people doing ordinary things – drinking socially but to an excessive degree.

“I don’t think the public are aware that simply by drinking to excess they could end up dead as a result of aspirating vomit or suppressing the respiratory system.”

He said even he hadn’t been aware of it until the inquests. He said warning labels on alcohol could raise public awareness.

Wellington Hospital emergency department specialist Paul Quigley said it was impossible to know the difference between a drunk who would simply sleep it off and those who would die. “Everyone who drinks to the point that they are unrousable is at risk of death. It’s as simple as that.”

It was best to keep the drunk awake if possible, or place them in the recovery position with their head in a slightly downward position so that any vomit would trickle away.

were so keen for him to go and get a degree – but if I’d known I was throwing him into this drinking culture I would never have sent him there so young.”

The Hansmans prepared a submission for the Law Commission in October, suggesting the drinking age be returned to 20 and alcohol removed from supermarkets.

They say the coroner made no recomm-endations about alcohol at Daniel’s inquest. “The only thing that’s been done is that where he fell in, they have life rings now,” says Eddie.

WI LLY C RANSWIC Kborn December 30, 1983. Died Wellington,

september 24, 2003.

Wairarapa sheep farmers Rod and Belinda Cranswick always worried about the heavy drinking culture at

Massey University’s Palmerston North campus. At son Willy’s orientation week, says Belinda, they’d even erected what they called a “spew tent” to look after the drunks.

The most popular student pub was “The Fitz”, where Willy, a second-year business student, and three friends each downed about 24 double bourbons before playing bull-rush with bar staff. Willy was knocked out for about five or 10 minutes during the game but staff failed to call the ambulance which could have saved his life – despite being twice requested to do so. He died two days later after being flown to Wellington Hospital’s intensive-care unit. His parents had to make the decision to turn off his life support.

Willy’s girlfriend, Rebecca Collins, who says she lost the “love of my life” when he died, had never seen him and his mates as drunk as they were that night. “We were all students, we all went out and had fun, but I couldn’t believe the state they were in. They’d had 100 drinks between them.”

She’d been called to pick Willy up around midnight – and found him sitting outside on the ground where bar staff had put him, apparently after one said he was “an embarrassment” to the pub. She took Willy to her flat, and her flatmate helped get him to bed. He was in great spirits, slurring and rambling good-naturedly, happy that he’d been with his mates, “and he loved those guys so much”.

She found him unconscious in bed the next morning.

At one of the hearings following Willy’s

DANI E L HANSMANborn september 17, 1986. Died Wellington,

august 10, 2006.

Daniel Hansman was so wasted the night he fell off the wharf into Wellington Harbour that his friends had needed to carry him to the Coyote Bar in

Courtenay Place. They’d already got drunk at a student party, but the bar’s offer of free admission or cut-price drinks – parents Eddie and Jean can’t remember which – was not to be missed.

“He was totally tanked up; right off his tree,” says Eddie, “but his friends were determined to go because of the free passes.”

Declined admission to the bar about 9pm, Daniel lost track of his friends and spent several hours searching and texting before toppling into the water near the overseas terminal. No one knows exactly what time, but his friends’ phone records suggest it may have been up to three hours later.

The Hansmans believe he was heading for another popular student haunt near the terminal when he drowned. His body was not found for a week.

They’d travelled to Wellington from Taranaki most weekends to visit Daniel at the flat he shared with four other students from the ’Naki, and had become alarmed at how much he was drinking. He was getting drunk at least once a week, and binge drinking a couple of other nights.

The teenagers would drink the cheapest


A computer- animation student in his second year away from home, Daniel Hansman was quiet and peace-loving. Ironically, says his mother Jean, Daniel said he didn’t even like the taste of alcohol, and never drank before he turned 18.

thing they could find – often supermarket wine. “We’d gone down and growled at him a couple of times, and said things like, ‘You’ve got to watch it, eh. You can’t keep going like that,’” says Eddie.

“He was trying to slow down and not do it all the time,” a heartbroken Jean told North & South. “He even rang my mum two weeks before this happened because she was so worried about his drinking. I’d kept telling Mum I was really scared for him and she told him, ‘Be careful, look after yourself.’ Daniel said, ‘Don’t worry, Nana, I’m going to cut down and slow down. I’m not going to do that stuff any more.’”

A computer-animation student in his second year away from home, Daniel Hansman was quiet and peace-loving and his parents believe he drank to ease his shyness around women. The other problem was boredom, his mother says. At home, he went surfing or played the drums – neither of which he could do at Victoria. He didn’t have a car to get to the beach and couldn’t disturb the other students with his drums.

Ironically, says Jean, Daniel said he didn’t even like the taste of alcohol, and never drank before he turned 18.

Had she realised the danger her son was in at university she wouldn’t have let him go till he was older. “They are definitely in peril. They go from being at school where their lives are controlled and there are rules and all of a sudden they have no boundaries. A lot of parents don’t know what’s going on. We thought we were doing the right thing – we

that night because staff feared police attention would follow – after all, staff had served Willy and his friends six $48 trays of 16 doubles at a time.

They accept, of course, that Willy’s drinking that night was foolhardy, but their anger at the bar manager’s lack of responsibility for Willy’s wellbeing remains. “The heartbreak of losing our beloved Willy is hard enough, but the fact the bar manager turned his back on him when he so desperately needed help is too much to bear.”

Says Rod: “Belinda asked the bar manager why he didn’t ring an ambulance. He said, ‘I don’t have to put up with listening to this crap’ and walked off and left us.”

They’d always feared Massey’s booze culture and hammered the safe-drinking message to all three of their kids.

“You can tell them till you’re blue in the face but teenagers are always going to do silly things – and why shouldn’t they have a bit of fun? – so there need to be safety nets for them,” says Belinda.

The university’s community manager wrote to the pub after Willy’s death, saying that while students needed to take some responsibility for their actions, they were aggressively targeted, a lucrative market, and vulnerable because they were inexperienced drinkers.

The Cranswicks have a box of cuttings of ads by the Fitz and other pubs in the student newspaper Chaff offering deals such as three “Cruisers” for $10, $2 triples and $1 nips of Jim Beam every Tuesday. Students were bombarded by flyers in the mailbox, and alcohol-branded material. “You are really battling the liquor industry,” says Belinda, “and it’s very powerful.”

Like Daniel Hansman, Willy Cranswick was planning to cut down on his drinking. Says Belinda: “He told his sister a week before he died that he was getting sick of Palmerston North and the pub scene. Alcohol was a novelty in the first year but he was over it.”

After Willy’s death, alcohol was banned from student hostels at Massey University from Monday to Thursday. The Fitz closed last December.

death – which included his inquest and liquor-licence reviews – the bar manager testified that Willy and his mates weren’t drunk. “We asked him what his interpretation of the term ‘pissed’ was,” says Rod Cranswick, “and he said, ‘When they stand at the bar and pee their pants.’”

So it was in appalled disbelief that they heard a judge acquit the bar manager of breaching the Sale of Liquor Act by serving drunk patrons. At Willy’s inquest, Palmerston North surgeon Richard Coutts contradicted the decision, saying Willy was intoxicated. “It beggars belief that anyone could find otherwise.”

The Cranswicks believe help wasn’t called


The bar manager testified that Willy

and his mates weren’t drunk. “We asked him what his

interpretation of the term ‘pissed’ was,”

says Rod Cranswick, “and he said, ‘When

they stand at the bar and pee their pants.’”

says. “The liquor industry doesn’t care about your kid. Your kid is a commercial opportunity for them. Their responsibility is to make a profit.”

Kypri, who is based at the University of Newcastle in Australia, says first-year students are of particular concern. “For most of them, it’s their first time away from home for an extended time and they’re bombarded with alcohol marketing and events that go along with it. It’s part of the landscape and it would be nice to give them a bit of space to adjust to quite a big life transition before alcohol is thrown into the mix with such vigour.”

The Law Commission’s issues paper “soft-pedalled” on alcohol marketing and advertising, suggesting the link between promotion and consumption was complex and “important commercial freedoms” would need to be considered in any ban on price advertising.

But Kypri believes when there’s a major problem such as this, lawmakers should adopt a precautionary approach and “seek evidence from the proponents of the activity that promoting alcohol is risk-free and not place the burden of proof on the community to show the risk of harm”.

Law Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer told North & South the issue of alcohol and university students was difficult to treat in isolation from the country’s wider drinking culture. The

relied on alcohol advertisements and how the density of liquor outlets around university campuses directly contributed to alcohol problems.

In 2003, he revealed that students dramatically over-estimate the drinking levels of their peers, with more than 90 per cent thinking others drank more than them. In 2005, his survey of more than 2500 students from five universities found that when students drank, most consumed more than the recommended maximums of four drinks for women and six for men.

“There is a risk for young people going to a university away from their family,” he


Senior research fellow Kyp Kypri, an associate of Otago University’s Injury Prevention Research Unit, probably knows more about the drinking habits of New Zealand university

students than anyone else. For the past decade, his studies have

shown they’re drinking more hazardously than their non-student peers – partly because of the way they’re targeted by the liquor industry.

In two papers published last year, he reported how heavily student newspapers

Universities and Booze – DEATH BY DEgREES?

“There is a risk for young people going to a university away from their family,” says researcher Kyp Kypri. “The liquor industry doesn’t care about your kid. Your kid is a commercial opportunity for them. Their responsibility is to make a profit.”

Zealand societies are culturally quite different in their attitudes to alcohol. For example, 80 per cent of New Zealanders drink compared with 60 per cent of Americans, partly because the US legal drinking age is 21. “Your young people start drinking at a much higher rate much earlier than ours.”

In Pennsylvania, his initiatives reduced student consumption at Bloomsburg by 20 per cent over 15 years. They included informing students about risks and advising them and their parents before admission about the institution’s disciplinary policies. In most states in the US, drinking violations at university meant a student would not be permitted to work in certain professions, including medicine, nursing and dentistry – and such a move could be investigated in New Zealand.

Asked what parents could do to protect their children at university, he says: “I’m asked this all the time and I have to say there’s no silver bullet which is going to kill the werewolf here. But the evidence in the US shows parents do have an influence. If the parent says, ‘I expect you to go to college and not waste my money. I expect you to study and not get drunk every night of the week – this is not tolerable in my household,’ the kids listen.”

Alcohol Healthwatch director Rebecca Williams, who co-ordinates the national advisory group on tertiary student drinking, says it is difficult to say which Law Commission recommendations would have saved the young men in North & South’s story. “But the evidence is very clear about what works to reduce harm, and the relevant things in relation to student drinking are the purchase age, the price and accessibility to alcohol.

“Students are very price-sensitive and we know pricing strategies really do limit not only access but the amount they drink on each occasion.”

She says universities, particularly Otago, were taking alcohol issues very seriously, and Victoria had also been active in promoting safe drinking, warning students of the risks with provocative postcards, assessing risk and intervening to reduce hazardous student drinking.

The commission report was only a range of options. “We can twiddle around the edges all we like but we have to do what works.

“We have to make the transition from just talking about this stuff and trying to be PC about it all. We have to be brave.” +

that was unlikely to be publicly acceptable.There is evidence, though, that

universities and student associations are beginning to respond to the problem. Otago University’s council announced in October that it would eliminate alcohol advertising and sponsorship from university grounds and at university events or activities, wherever they were held.

The industry’s response was illuminating: a spokeswoman for Lion Nathan, which makes Speight’s among other brands, said it had five-year product deals with the university and students association and was “surprised and disappointed” the university hadn’t consulted it first. She said the company could seek damages.

New Zealand University Students Association co-president Sophia Blair says there’s wide variation in policies among campuses. Some associations have advertising prohibition policies while others have a bar on campus and are willing to accept industry sponsorship of events and advertising in student papers. “A lot have moved towards reducing their dependence on advertising or sponsorship on campus because of issues around student safety.”

Professor Barry Jackson, director of the drug, alcohol and wellness network at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, who’s here on sabbatical as an honorary senior research fellow at Otago University in Wellington, says American and New

liberal regulatory regime since 1989 had meant that alcohol was treated as any other commodity. “And if you put it with the pumpkins in the supermarket you are going to cause the expectation to arise that it’s just like anything else. The underlying problem is that drinking to intoxication has become normalised. It’s seen as a harmless form of entertainment when it’s actually extremely dangerous, but the health problems are not at all well known.

“The problem really is peer-group pressure among a lot of young people. It’s thought to be socially acceptable to get drunk, to throw up and have your mate take a picture and put it on Facebook. When I went to university, it wasn’t acceptable to be seen to be clearly drunk and incapable. Now it’s cool to throw up, it’s sort of a rite of passage. The question I’m asking is, ‘Why is it cool to be drunk?’ And these [students] are supposed to be the best and the brightest – hello?”

The commission’s proposals, particularly to increase prices and raise the age at which alcohol can be bought at off-licences, should lower harm and consumption, he says.

National Addiction Centre director Doug Sellman says students are largely ignorant about the dangers of booze. For example, the lethal dose

of alcohol is 10 times the normal low recreational dose of two to three drinks, whereas it was almost impossible to take a lethal dose of cannabis, which had a safety ratio of more than 1000 times the recreational dose.

University capping and orientation weeks were “really fuelled by the industry” with free products, sponsorship and discounts. The industry spent about $200,000 a day maintaining a heavy- drinking culture. “Relentless drug-pushing works.”

The best thing that parents could do was to model responsible drinking before their children left home, and to keep in close contact with them, especially in the first year.

He says that while the Law Commission report had largely covered price, purchase age, driving limits and opening-hour restrictions, it was imperative alcohol marketing and advertising be reduced. He also favoured supermarkets becoming alcohol free but the Law Commission said


“It’s thought to be socially acceptable to get drunk, to throw up and have your mate take a picture and put it on Facebook. When I went to university, it wasn’t acceptable to be seen to be clearly drunk and incapable. ”

Law Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer

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Dying for a Drink