News

01 | Health Nazis

Yeah that’s right, Critic breached Godwin’s law. Deal with it. The health nazis want to ban alcohol (and the KFC Double Down) to protect you from yourself. According to these finger-wagging wowsers, if a guy drinks six standards, he’s officially binge-drinking. That would explain the crazy antics of Hunter S. Thompson during his legendary six-beer benders.

02 | Prohibitionists in Denial

You know the type. “Oh no, we don’t want to ban alcohol. We just want to tax it out of the price range of everyday people, ban it from being sold anywhere except liquor stores, prevent new liquor stores from opening, and force the current liquor stores to close at 7pm.” Just man up and admit you want Otago to be a dry province.

03 | I Don’t Drink Alcohol, so it should be Banned

New Zealanders have a very bad habit of wanting to ban anything they don’t personally partake in. Every time the New Zealand Herald or Stuff.co.nz runs an online poll saying “should we ban X”, 80% of their readers tick “yes”. It doesn’t matter if it’s skydiving, party pills, civil unions, or tanning beds. Live and let live, peeps.

04 | Moral Judges

Despite the whole being-in-the-21st-century thing, there are still plenty of people who think drinking and making merry is morally wrong. Judges yearn for the good old days where teenagers drank milkshakes and played Cluedo on Saturday nights.

05 | People Sick of Dealing with Drunken Troublemakers

This includes the police and hospital staff. These are the only people who have a legitimate gripe. But what they fail to realise is that drinking doesn’t cause trouble, idiots cause trouble. The vast majority of students drink and have a great time without harming so much as a fly, or a Selwynite. Don’t ban the fun of the many for the sins of the few.

06 | Sneaky Self-Interested Lobbyists

You can’t blame the Hospitality Association (which represents NZ’s bars and pubs) for lobbying for stupid alcohol laws for their own personal gain. The HANZ’s job is to get people drinking in bars. So they call for 18- and 19-year-olds to only be allowed to drink in pubs, not at home. And they call for alcohol to be banned from supermarkets. For the “public good” of course.