Beer-baccy tax health fund idea defended

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 7

Beer-baccy tax health fund idea defended

By

DEBORAH McPHERSON

A Christchurch wine connoisseur, Professor Don Beaven, sees nothing hypocritical in his call for a tax on “beer and baccy,” which would exclude wine and spirit consumers.

Professor Beaven, a wine industry critic and a member of the Canterbury Hospital Board, has proposed a tax on beer and tobacco to help fund the region’s health services. He claimed a tax which penalised beer drinkers while excluding wine and spirit drinkers was “logical” rather than hypocritical. He said it was logical to target those people statistics showed were the most burden to the health care system. Medical research in New Zealand had shown that between 70 and 80 per cent of serious road accidents involved people, mostly young men, who had been drinking large amounts of beer in hotels, mainly without eating.

People who drank wine, however, tended to drink it with food, which lessened the effects of alcohol, said Professor Beaven. Professor Beaven said he wrote about wine to encourage the sort of “cultural controls” that had evolved in its 10,000year history.

“Ancient cultures would not tolerate drunkenness except at special festivals,” he said. In northern Italy and in Greece, young men did not spend all their time in taverns, but at home, drinking wine and eating with their wives, friends and families, he said. “We have not adapted to the concept that we must have some cultural control over alcohol." New Zealand was the only country in the world,

where “jugs of beer” were sold, said Professor Beaven, who has lived in Europe. He admitted, however, that the culture of heavy drinking among young New Zealand males was rapidly becoming unacceptable to most New Zealanders. Professor Beaven said he wanted to see more decentralisation of deci-sion-making, particularly in the area of health services. He said Christchurch people should be able to decide for themselves what taxes they should have, and what should be taxed. He hoped his proposal would generate discussion about health maintenance, and that good values and cultural controls would eventually emerge.