A Treasury report now before the Australian government recommends a new system for taxing alcoholic drinks.

They are to be taxed on the basis of their alcohol content.

This will probably cause the price of wine bought in 4- 0r 5-litre casks to rise by about 200 percent.

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The Winemakers’ Federation of Australia is angry.

Its spokesman, Stephen Strachan, says the change will reduce their sales by 30 percent. Cask wine accounts for 40 percent of Australian wine sales.

Cask wine has long been the method of choice for older alcoholics to get comatose cheaply. Ask your family doctor the results of cask wine as seen from his point of view. (Younger binge-drinkers typically use purpose-marketed, blackout-inducing “premixed drinks” containing vodka or other spirits manufactured by another section of the sociopathic alcohol industry.)

Mr Strachan also warns that 12,000 jobs will be lost.

It could be argued that if the main result of a job is to render fellow-citizens brain-damaged, then such jobs are better lost.

* * *

Alcohol is Australia’s worst drug problem.

The myth that most alcohol is drunk by nice people in nice amounts which do them no harm needs to be exploded.

In fact it has been exploded by research over and over again. But it is not well-publicised research for some reason. The media don’t give it much space.

Perhaps the media owners are mates of – or even the same people as – those making themselves rich by promoting alcohol-swallowing.

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Research by Dr Katie Waters, published in 2006, showed that youngsters encouraged to drink “moderately” by their parents became more often problem-drinkers that those brought up not drinking at all. (uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_3525.html)

The previous year, research by Dr Rosa Alati found that teenagers whose mothers drank alcohol were the ones most prone to become alcohol-abusers. (ABC News Online, November 24, 2005)

* * *

It seems that what we need most, alcohol-wise, is for parents to teach their children not to drink — and to not drink themselves — and for the cost of alcohol to be pushed up and up – the higher the better.