NZ drinkers prolific preloaders
WELLINGTON: New Zealanders are among the most prolific preloaders in the world when it comes to drinking — prompting a call for action by a leading alcohol researcher.
The research, published yesterday by Swiss and Australian researchers in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review, found countries with higher levels of drinking in general — New Zealand’s prevalence of current drinkers was estimated at 79.5% — also had a higher percentage of predrinkers as a result.
The group who preferred to drink heavily at home before going out, according to the study, was put at 78.7% of 1560 Kiwis surveyed.
The figure here was ahead of Australia (64.1% of 1855), the United States (65% of 3878) and the United Kingdom (75.3% of 4763).
The authors said this suggested predrinking was affected by the same cultural tendency to drink that underpinned alcohol use in the general population.
The findings were not surprising to alcohol researcher and Alcohol Healthwatch executive director Nicki Jackson.
‘‘New Zealand has one of the highest prevalences of pre drinking behaviour — over threequarters of people between the ages of 16 and 35 — which is aligned to the prevalence that we have from smaller studies.’’
Dr Jackson said a big factor was the price difference between alcohol bought onlicence and offlicence.
‘‘In New Zealand, where we have a high density of offlicence outlets, we know from research that where we have increased competition for offlicences then the prices come down and that increases opportunities to purchase alcohol at a very low price.
‘‘And we are talking about buying [a readytodrink] and spiritsbased drink for less than $2 each; and of course, young people who are very pricesensitive will often go for the cheapest option.’’
Dr Jackson believed New Zealand had to ‘‘take a stand’’ to increase the price of alcohol, especially within offlicence premises.
‘‘We haven’t had any movement for a long, long time on this and we would like the same amount of attention that’s paid to cigarette tax to be applied to alcohol.
‘‘We also know that the preva lence of hazardous drinking is increasing again — so we can’t be complacent here.’’
Overall, the new study showed that more than 50% of people surveyed across all countries were predrinking before a night out and the greatest percentage of predrinkers was in either Englishspeaking or Nordic countries.
The only countries whose prevalence of preloading fell below 50% were Greece (17.7% of 283 respondents), Brazil (32.2% of 3931) Switzerland (48.8% of 3672) Poland (47.9% of 334) and Hungary (46.2% of 3308).