Educating children not the best solution to alcohol-related harm

Alcohol Healthwatch says we need to look beyond educating children and young people to address deeply embedded attitudes and behaviours concerning alcohol.

The Operation Clover team investigating the Roast Busters incident expressed concern at the prevalence of alcohol in the lives of the teenagers interviewed. However, their suggested response that “sexual education programmes may be enhanced by raising the emphasis around the issues of consent particularly when linked to alcohol and drugs and the ability of individuals to provide informed consent,” is deeply chilling says, Alcohol Healthwatch Director Rebecca Williams.

“The suggestion we can educate our way out of this problem, while well intended, is naive and ill-informed.

“While good quality, well delivered education is important, studies show educational responses to reducing alcohol-related harm are ineffective, and cannot be relied upon to achieve the necessary social changes that would protect young people from alcohol-related harm.”

Williams says what actually works most effectively is reducing access to and availability of alcohol, increasing the price and restricting its promotion.

“The Law Commission gave us the blueprint for this back in 2010, and we have done so little towards actually dealing with this issue. Instead we procrastinate, spend millions of tax- and rate-payers’ dollars attempting to make clumsy laws work. Meanwhile we leave the marketing and labelling of alcohol in the hands of vested interest groups.”

Williams says it is also important not to see the Roast Busters case as an isolated incident. She says alcohol is implicated in around half of sexual assaults, about 10,000 a year. Twenty three percent of young people at high school in New Zealand engage in binge-drinking, often with tragic results.

“Relying on educational approaches is effectively doing more of the same yet expecting a different result. It is unethical to simply educate young people and expect them to be responsible for their safety while at the same time failing to enact the measures we know will better protect them.

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