At festive times alcohol sits enthroned. Soon afterwards, as most recently in Sydney, it often stands in the dock, on trial for lethal violence in the cities and the trail of broken bottles lying in wait for children's feet on beaches.
The strategies of the defence and the prosecution are predictable. The libertarian response is to keep silent about the money that is made from alcohol, and to insist that people, not alcohol is the problem. So the proper response is to lock up for longer people who act violently. This incidentally illustrates the libertarian paradox that the higher the priority which societies place on individual freedom, the greater the number of individuals they will deprive of their freedom.
The prosecution will cite the testimony of doctors, social workers and police who see the children injured by broken glass, the people killed and maimed by drunken violence, the women abused, and the damage done to body and spirit by addiction, generally propose tighter regulation. Usually nothing much happens.
In New South Wales the centrepiece of reform has been mandatory mimimum sentences for those convicted of violent offences under the influence of alcohol. It has been accompanied by some restrictions on the sale of alcohol in the city. The Victorian Government has taken over only mandatory sentencing. It is doubtful whether any of these measures will reduce significantly the harm caused by alcohol abuse.
As with guns in the United States, it is easy to blame legislators and interest groups for ineffective regulation. It is more helpful first to reflect on the place of alcohol in our culture and the power of a pervasive myth that will always protect alcohol from effective regulation.
The reality is that alcohol is a substance that affects mood, often pleasurably, and lowers inhibitions. Many people drink abusively and become addicted to it, with tragic consequences for their own lives and for society. In these respects it is like nicotine, opium and its derivatives, and marijuana.
The myth of alcohol is that it is an indispensable and effective gateway to autonomous, confident and connected lives. For young people alcohol is an important part of rites of transition: from adolescence to adulthood, and increasingly from childhood to adolescence. Alcohol is valued because it loosens inhibitions against socialising and can help them for a moment to feel in charge of their lives.
Binge drinking among adolescents reflects the myth of adult drinking. To be an adult, particularly a male, is to be able to hold one's drink, to work hard and drink hard, and so to be one of the mates.
All mood changing substances rely on this myth of a better life and relationships. The alcohol myth is distinctive because it is rooted in high as well as in popular culture. Literature and cultivated conversation celebrate alcohol in a way that, with some exceptions, is not true of other mood altering substances like opium and nicotine. The encomia to wine and other drinks romanticise the drinking of alcohol and sentimentalise the way in which abuse and addiction are seen. Alcohol can then be seen to be the spur that makes genius run free, and its abuse justified by its contribution to creativity.
In such popular literature as the crime stories featuring John Rebus and Hieronymus Bosch, heavy drinking is tied to the protagonists' flaws. But it also reflects their integrity in refusing to harden themselves against human pain and injustice, so distinguishing them from their sober and morally compromised superior officers.
Alcohol also has a privileged place in polite society. To talk knowledgeably about the bouquet and aroma of wines or spirits from different districts and to be familiar with the conventions of serving alcohol are seen as a mark of good breeding and sophistication.
My point in describing the ways in which alcohol is so deeply embedded in the myths of our culture is not to decry drinking, enjoying or talking about alcohol but to explain why attempts to regulate its consumption and limit the damage it does will be unlikely to succeed. At all levels of our culture alcohol is protected.
Heavy handed regulation of mood changing substances usually has more bad consequences than good, as was the case of Prohibition in the USA, and is arguably the case in the criminalisation of opium and other hard drugs.
The key changes needed are cultural. Not to demonise alcohol but to mock the romantic myths that obscure its reality: that it is a mind altering drug pleasant in moderation but one which is massively abused with great cost to those addicted, to those whose lives they touch, and to society at large.
The plain packaging of alcohol may for the time being be a step too far, but plain, honest speaking about it is a necessary first step.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.