kewpid.net

Haven’t pos­ted in a while, and this is a bit top­ical

Point of Ori­gin divx Nos­trada­mus: 2012 ipod

• Eight Below move

For the Love of Benji divx

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Put­ting graphic labels on alco­hol bottles takes a leaf out of exist­ing policy regard­ing cigar­ettes and tobacco. It’s quite obvi­ous that it is just the gov­ern­ment want­ing to look like it is “doing some­thing”, as it always must, when shock jocks and asso­ci­ated rent seekers sink their teeth into an issue.

I think that in the short term such a cam­paign will have little effect — young people who want to drink are unlikely to be ser­i­ously affected by graphic images. They just want to get pissed.

In gen­eral a scare cam­paign will not work, because alco­hol con­sump­tion is cur­rently viewed dif­fer­ently from smoking. It took a con­cer­ted (and expens­ive) effort over sev­eral dec­ades to change people’s views and atti­tudes about cigar­ettes. In addi­tion there is a deep-seated drink­ing cul­ture in Aus­tralia — those who wisely choose to be tee­totallers are viewed with sus­pi­cion and some­times out­right hos­til­ity. How much time and money is it going to take to change that?

This is an instance where I think it would be prudent to simply not bother with a pre­ven­tion cam­paign, that would ulti­mately fail. Instead, ramp up the pun­ish­ments. Per­sonal respons­ib­il­ity people; if the mes­sage doesn’t sink in, at least that’s a source of revenue.

Most will grow out of it. Those that don’t can become sport­ing heroes.