Hard liquor masqueraded as fruit juice. A Q&A session

MEDIA RELEASE

“Expert mix” - Hard liquor masqueraded as fruit juice. A Q&A session about responsibility

Question: WHO IS THE RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUAL?

“When advertisements promote and masquerade ‘expertly mixed’ hard liquor as fruit juice, then who is really responsible for high levels of alcohol consumption in our society?” questions Karen Morrison-Hume, Anglican Action Missioner.

Media and marketing industry as vehicle
There are frequent advertisements in all forms of media that promote alcohol as a socially desirable product while at the same time individuals are told that they must take responsibility for the alcohol they consume.

For instance, in a newspaper supplement last weekend, two separate half page ads featured what looked at first glance, to be a cask of fruit juice – cranberry and blood orange. However a closer look shows that it is an “expert mix” of vodka and juice. It invites consumers to start summer early! The image of a 2 litre cask with the tap turned on to hard liquor masquerading as fruit juice is a cynical marketing ploy. It is designed purely and simply to capture, I believe, young women. They are the new negative statistic from the binge drinking culture.

Alcohol industry as driver
The alcohol industry’s spin when challenged on their brazen exploitation of vulnerable citizens is that “individual’s control their behaviour because it’s individuals and not industries that consume alcohol irresponsibly” said Ms Morrison-Hume.

The alcohol industry, in blaming individual over-consumption, deflects attention from the thousands of dollars they invest in marketing and sponsorship in order to capture more individuals and hook them into their products.

Government as passenger
Government is complicit in this charade. According to John Key, in a recent statement about alcohol law reform, changes to the heavy drinking culture in New Zealand “has to come from us as individuals”. This, I suggest, is the rhetoric of a government whose real interests lie with the industries of exploitation from which they derive much income and support. Is the government along with the alcohol industry putting profit at any cost before people?

Consumers the wreckage
Every day in our work on community margins, we witness the social carnage from the effects of alcohol abuse. This is supplemented by media reports highlighting the devastating impacts of our shocking binge drinking culture.

We continue to hear from hospitals, prisons and police, schools and refuges about the growing levels of alcohol fuelled violence. We despair over youth drunkenness.

Whilst we recognize that individuals are at the centre of all of this, we seem completely unwilling to get to source of the problem – the alcohol industry’s relentless and ruthless marketing to individuals.

Questions:
Are booze barons individuals?
What about the individual responsibilities of the booze barons and the marketing industries?
Do the people in industry and government have any individual responsibility to do business with a common good purpose?
Is the bottom line just about profit at any cost?
To whom does the responsibility fall to ensure we live with sincere regard for one another, particularly our vulnerable ones?

Answers:
We, each and every individual, are all responsible – individual industries, individual governments, individual communities, individual families, individual persons – for the common good and the protection of the most vulnerable in our society.

The law serves to ensure this common good is protected.

We must adopt the full recommendations from the Law Commission on alcohol reform as a show of our individual and common good responsibility to each other.

ends