With the forces of what used to be called the NannyState* arrayed in all their battle finery against the forces of evil and darkness (or the “booze barons” as the media like to call them), it’s perhaps timely to have a look at the whole debate on alcohol harm and binge drinking.

My own thoughts on this are simple: to reduce the level of alcohol abuse, we need to make it a criminal offence to be drunk in public, we need to reintroduce people to personal responsibility (no one makes you get drunk) and we also need to change the law so that being drunk is considered an aggravating factor in offending rather than a mitigation.

We also need to reward the operators who are doing the right thing and punish those who aren’t.

Sadly, it’s not a level playing field. The “good guys” would like to see prices hiked, licence numbers reduced and a blanket ban on advertising. (Perhaps someone should tell them that alcohol is a perfectly legal product.) They also want more funding for “reducing harms”, on top of the several millions of dollars they already get from the taxpayer and – in ALAC’s case – the industry itself.

Meanwhile, the nasty liquor barons, who hold down law-abiding citizens and force them to drink to intoxication, have to struggle along funding themselves. It seems odd that the liquor industry should have to fund organisations whose sole purpose is to lobby against the liquor industry.

The campaign against drinking seems to be aimed fairly and squarely at bars, too, which is odd, given that the majority of drinking in this country doesn’t happen in bars. It happens in private houses or streets or anywhere except bars, seemingly, but no one is suggesting that private homeowners be legally obliged to ensure that no one on the premises is pissed.

There is also another inequity – while beer, RTDs and spirits are routinely demonised as mind-controlling substances that are ruining our society, wine seems to have escaped such opprobrium entirely and I can’t for the life of me see why.

In a past life I was a doorman. I would deal with beery rugby blokes and whisky-sodden car salesmen all night and I have to say they were never as much trouble as wine-soaked women. Not just young girls, but middle-aged women who should really have known better.

Sure, people get drunk and act stupidly, causing all manner of damage to themselves and others, but they aren’t all swigging Scotch or hammering the lager. Given the amount of wine consumed in New Zealand I’d be amazed if wine wasn’t even a teeny little bit responsible for some of our binge drinking.

That scenario doesn’t sit too well with the temperance lobby, of course, as wine is the drink of choice among the very class of people that it consists of. Funny that.

So, I suppose my question is this: Why is it, when most people are drinking themselves insensible at home or at a mate’s, that bars cop all the flak? And why is it always brewers and distillers who wear the brunt of the disapproval?

* When we had a Labour government, interfering in the private lives of citizens was always referred to as “NannyState” politics. Now that we have a National government, this phrase seems to have disappeared, despite a raft of similar-style legislation. Perhaps we need a new phrase for this. Suggestions on a postcard.