Experts in NSW want liquor figures publicised because they believe monitoring consumption is the key to combating problems associated with alcohol.
According to a leading alcohol researcher Professor Tanya Chikritzhs, from the National Drug Research Institute, the NSW government is oblivious to the amount of alcohol being consumed in the state, so it cannot effectively monitor whether alcohol related policies are working.
The government is now being urged to force the liquor industry to hand over its sales data which Prof Chikritzhs says is vital to monitor whether alcohol related policies were actually working, especially when you consider the great lengths the state government has gone to implement the new alcohol measures in Sydney.
According to the professor the fact that researchers don’t have even basic information on alcohol use in NSW is unacceptable. Researchers don’t even know whether alcohol use is higher than expected or desired or different for different communities.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics collects national data using tax information but doesn’t define alcohol consumption by communities or areas.
”It’s quite a bizarre situation when you consider it’s a regulated substance and nobody’s actually watching how much of it is being sold,” she said.
Apparently states and territories routinely collected alcohol sales data until 1996 however this came to an end when the High Court ruled they could no longer levy taxes on alcohol. The only states who continued to collect the date were Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and now the ACT has joined in the Project run by Professor Chikritzhs to collect the information.
Currently the Victorian Justice Department is deciding whether to restart data collection. That would leave NSW, Tasmania and SA as the only states where data is not collected. According to Professor Chikritzhs the reluctance of the liquor industry to participate is the reason for this.
Chikritzhs went on to explain:
”I think there’s concern which is yet to be fully mitigated that it’s an unfair imposition on the industry,” she said. ”And I suspect there are quarters of the industry that resist quite strongly governments having more knowledge about what’s happening with their industry.”
Meanwhile, public health expert Dr Alex Wodak said he would ”wager a huge amount of money that the word ‘tough’ would be used in the cabinet announcement 20 times and there would not be a single evidence-based recommendation”.
The NSW government held alcohol summits in 2003 and 2013 but according to the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) there has been little progress since then. Following these summits, just 19 of 107 preventative recommendations were adopted. Most of the measures that were implemented were awareness promoting measures which have made little impact. FARE supported making the liquor figures known. The article on Smh.com.au went on to explain:
FARE policy director Caterina Giorgi said that knowledge about what could work in relation to alcohol abuse had grown in 10 years yet the challenge was making governments rely on evidence and break away from the hotels and alcohol lobby.
Dr Wodak said it was clear the government ”has outsourced alcohol policy to the liquor industry and that’s really why we have the Thomas Kellys and Daniel Christies”.