The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) has called for the legal drinking age in Australia to rise to 21.

 

The suggestion has come as the Northern Territory government ponders its Alcohol Policies and Legislation Review.

 

There have been 74 submissions to the review from health, legal, community, Indigenous groups, as well as the hotel and alcohol industries. While the RACP is currently focussed on the situation in the NT – which has the highest alcohol harm rates in the country and 530 liquor licences across the Territory, or one for every 353 Territorians – it believes its recommendations should be implemented Australia wide. 

 

It’s president, Dr Catherine Yelland, has also recommended the NT Government ban alcohol advertising on public transport and during sports events and set a minimum price per drink.

 

“Starting drinking at an early age is associated with more risk of harmful behaviours while the young person is drinking, and also long-term effects from lifelong harmful drinking,” she told ABC News. “If you start earlier, you’re likely to continue.”

 

Meanwhile, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) noted in its submission: “If the NT was a country, its per capita consumption would place it in the top 10 drinking nations in the world. Of Territorians aged over 12, more than a third consume alcohol at rates that place them at risk of short-term harm, and more than one-in-four people drink at levels that place them at risk of long-term harm, including chronic disease and illness.”

 

Among FARE’s 53 recommendations are setting a minimum alcohol price that rises with wages, prohibiting shopping docket promotions and extreme discounting of alcohol and banning political donations from the alcohol industry and its representatives.

 

The Australian Hotels Association has recently been the largest donor to both major parties in the Northern Territory.

 

Industry pushes back

 

Alcohol Beverages Australia said the Government should focus on a “bespoke, targeted program” in the NT, rather than the community-wide approach advocated by health groups.

 

“The problems of alcohol misuse in the Northern Territory are part of complex social problems, which will not be solved by simplistic and blunt population wide restrictions of availability of alcohol,” said ABA executive director Fergus Taylor.

 

Taylor also dismissed the suggestion an Australia-wide legal drinking age of 21 was needed.

 

He pointed to the rising rate of alcohol abstinence among teenagers as evidence the measure wasn’t required, which up from 54.3% in 2004 to 82% in 2016. 

 

He noted FARE’s suggestion of minimum pricing as a model to reduce the harms from excessive alcohol consumption was ill-founded.

 

“Unfortunately, many of these suggestions have been made on the basis of the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model. The Model has attracted serious criticism for its methodology and the accuracy of the assumptions that the model relies upon,” he said. 

 

Flaws included:
•        The Model uses a false assumption that a heavy drinkers will reduce their consumption in relation to a price rise.
•        The assumptions used in the Model regarding the relationship between the price of alcohol and consumption have been refuted frequently based on real-world evidence. 
•        The Model uses substandard data and uses figures without estimates of error.
•        None of the effects of minimum pricing on the illicit alcohol trade were considered.
•        The possible health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption were ignored.