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Binge Drinking

Binge drinking is regarded as a prevalent issue in the modern teenage demographic. The governments plan to raise taxes on alcopops has been critiqued as a revenue raiser, an ill informed publicity stunt and a discriminatory act undertaken without the appropriate evidence. Conversely, there are those who agree with the increase in tax, stating that it is the beginning of an effective campaign designed to reduce teen binge drinking.

The editorial that appears in The Australian on the 29th April 2008 avers that the increase on tax will only defer binge drinking to a cheaper source of alcohol.   It further states that the government has turned this issue into a “$500 million-a-year budget windfall”. Loaded language surrounds this idea with the writer attacking the government through claims that it has “harnessed the economic ignorance of a politically correct, socially interventionist, left-leaning media”. This sentence aids in the positioning through the vilification of the government and its actions. This undertone of criticism continues throughout the article. The editorial further distances the government from the reader by maintaining that the government considers alcopops a “drink for rich people”, indicating the tax on pre-mixed drinks is based on a prejudice held by the government. The article expresses that the tax will only cause “binge drinkers to move further down the alcohol cost curve”. The offer of an outcome to the government’s taxes appeals to a sense of reason. This causes the reader to question the taxes early on in the editorial. The tobacco industry is used in the editorial as an example to display the ineffectiveness that an increase in tax has on addictive substances. It states that “the demand for tobacco is relatively unresponsive to changes in tobacco prices” and relates this situation to the increase in prices on pre-mixed drinks. The addition of statistics related to drinking and smoking aids in the relation between the two situations....