In the debate that ended in passing David Seymour’s bill allowing you to watch rugby in a bar (yes, people, that’s the kind of place we live in; where a law must be passed so you can watch sport with a drink in your hand), National’s Chris Bishop presented some frightening statistics about New Zealand drinking.
New Zealand ranks only 96th in the world for our rate of alcohol consumption.
Our binge drinking rate is only half that of Australia’s, and only one-sixth that of Britain’s.
That is appalling.
What is even worse is is that young people are drinking much less.
There are one-quarter fewer young drinkers now than five years ago, and one-third fewer than the turn of the century-and regular young drinkers – the best of that bunch – are dropping like flies, only half the number it was just fifteen years ago.
What’s more, the number of young drinkers who said they went binge drinking in the last month has dropped by18 percent since 2007!
Something is not right.
Clearly, we are raising a nation of wowsers.
Worse, an MP is raising these figures in parliament as a kind of apology for drinking, as a sop to the wowsers who might object to people having some fun with a drink in their hand.
Bugger them. We need to defend the right to enjoy ourselves, and not apologise for it.
Good on David Seymour and those MPs who did vote for his bill for moving a tiny bit in that direction.
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