Alcopops tax to be reintroduced

[Jovial Monk]

Differing levels of excise on different kinds of drinks.

$25 bottle of bourbon? Doubt you will find any under $40

[Jovial Monk]

And I doubt beer sales went up 47% after the tax was first introduced.

What should be done is to tax all alcoholic drinks at the same rate per unit of pure alcohol.

As I said, a justified tax grab because alcohol (over)consumption costs the govt & community plenty.

[mantra.]

TEENAGE girls as young as 15 are skolling vodka in a new twist of the spin-the-bottle game.

Girls are being hospitalised for acute alcohol poisoning as they participate in risky drinking by skolling straight spirits to try to compete with men.

Almost 1700 children were treated for alcohol poisoning in NSW hospitals last year.

those who have young daughters will also agree......

The price of ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages will fall by up to $1.30 after Parliament yesterday scuttled a 70 per cent tax hike that had been in place since April last year.

Senator Eric Abetz says the tax on alcopops should not be the same as for drinks with higher alcohol content.

He also says the ready-mixed sweetened beverages help drinkers keep track of their alcohol intake.

"As a result young people will be able to be very sure as to the amount of alcohol they drink,'' he said.

If they mixed the drinks themselves, young drinkers might not know how much alcohol they were consuming, he said.

Senator Abetz said young women liked alcopops because they prevented their drinks from being spiked.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/s ... 01,00.html

[JW Frogen]

This was a money grab, nothing else. Labour gives with one hand and picks your bottle with the other. (I am going to use my 900 dollar stimulus on booze just to teach them a lesson!)

The premixed drinks do help young people ration their intake, now I see them at my work walking down the street with liter coke bottles mixing their own, and we all know once you start mixing their own the coke booze content becomes far more booze than coke as the night goes on.

Hot, drunk young ladies are just one more cross I must bare in my job.

[Jovial Monk]

Yes it is a tax grab and good thing too! Alcohol/alcoholism costs the community plenty. Just like cigarettes, the govt takes a big tax on every packet (and, notice, only 1/3 now smoke??) but pays this out 30-40 years later on treatments for lung cancer, emphysema and the like to say nothing of lost work etc.

Booze & fags need to be taxed high!

All this crap about people switching to straight spirits is crap! That girl swilling straight vodka was doing it on a dare not because the alcopops were being taxed on a rational basis!

Froges, I can sell you a homebrew kit, still and all the ingredients you need, homebrew is the answer

[mantra.]

If Frogen is a bourbon drinker - I doubt he's going to be enticed by home brew. Disgusting. And Monk - it's easy for you to talk about taxing alcohol and cigarettes to the extremes - you're a reformed smoker who drinks wholesale priced home brew. We all know that ex smokers are the ones who preach the loudest and not everyone has the stomach - including young girls for rough malt home made beer.

Once they start taxing everything so much the poor can't afford it - we're going to see backyard distilleries spring up everywhere and there will be an even bigger market for drugs. Look at the battle they already have trying to control that under the counter tobacco which is sold everywhere.

[Jovial Monk]

Oy! My homebrew is NOT disgusting or rough!

And I drink commercial beer, Blue Saphire Gin, Cointreau and other things.

Listen up good. My father smoked since he was 13 or so. Took him a long time to die, LOTS of hospital visits and enough medicines taken EACH DAY to start a healthy young pharmacy! This was over 30 years. Puffing that Ventolin inhaler! He had to go on an invalid pension because he had so little wind he couldn't work. For the last 10 years he had a disabled parking permit as he couldn't walk much without puffing and being in distress.

Add up those hospital visits, all that ventolin, all the other plethora of subcription medicines and yes that excise on cigarettes is needed!

Use your brain!

With alcohol you got road accidents, absenteeism and then liver treatments for HM years?

This has nothing to do with my being a reformed smoker! I am proud of giving up cold turkey tho!

[mantra.]

Of course we all know how terrible smoking and drinking is for you - but that doesn't stop a lot of people. By taxing these two "unhealthy" habits where only the rich can afford them - people will only look for it cheaper elsewhere and it increases the black market. That is glaringly obvious.

Yes the government gets a lot of tax from cigarettes and alcohol - but then again - do those who have serious accidents through negligence, premature babies and disease ridden obese people for example - have to pay extra tax for making higher than average demands on our health system?

Rudd is planning to put extra taxes on all alcohol so it will get to the point where those people with serious alcohol problems will make even more sacrifices to fund their habit at the expense of their families. We will see an escalation of robbery to fund these unaffordable habits.

I suggest Rudd introduces higher taxes on food - fat people are the biggest threat to our health system.

[Jovial Monk]

Smoking and overindulgence in alcohol re two MAJOR preventable health probems.

People were still drinking alcopops, they were just paying a fair tax on them. Saying only the rich will be able to afford them is a bit overdramatic.

And you can make homebrewed spirits.

[mantra.]

And you can make homebrewed spirits.

That's interesting. I've never heard of a home brew vodka or bourbon kit before - apart from moonshine, but did they make that in Australia?