Temperance and prudence.(Ryan)(Column)

LAST WEEK I thought a lot about alcohol. That, in itself, made it no different from any other week, but I thought about it in a different way. Perhaps unconscious prompting came from three recent events of local history: New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Jeff Shaw mired in horrid difficulties; the cringe-creating embarrassment of that most polished public figure Andrew Peacock; the self destruction of the New South Wales leader of the Opposition John Brogden. This trio of unrelated cases is linked by the common factor of grog.

If only in this single respect, I have always claimed a place beside Winston Churchill: he and I shared a firm conviction that we had taken a great deal more out of alcohol than it had taken out of us. I believed that the social consumption of fermented and spirituous liquors was one of the sweetnesses and consolations of civilisation. I agreed with my lifelong mentor Doctor Johnson, that a chair in a tavern might well be the throne of human felicity. I was not unaware of the existence of teetotallers, but somehow rarely found myself in their company.

But was it possible--just conceivable--that wine is a mocker, that strong drink is raging? That the warnings of the wowsers deserve credence after all? That alcohol might be a deep-seated social cancer gnawing away at the vitals of the nation? That liquor was a corruption of public and political integrity? That it undermined our physical and mental health? That it was an insidious poison dissolving the moral fibre of our boys and girls? Crikey!

My decision was yes to all of the above; tick every box, but only up to a point. And with those perplexities settled, I poured another glass of soothing muscat, and toddled off to bed.

Anything can be abused, from hot pies to potato chips to aerosol spray cans for graffiti. There is much abuse of alcohol, and no shortage of propaganda against it: all those terrifying diagrams of shrivelled livers, and depictions of ghastly road accidents.

Although America's thirteen-year experiment with Prohibition ended three quarters of a century ago, there seems to linger even here in Australia a sort of folk understanding that here was a classic case of a cure worse than the disease. Prohibition is one folly we aren't likely to follow.

In a society like ours, is it too much to hope that steady education and social pressure could enforce a rule as simple as the following: To have enjoyed some social drinks is not an acceptable reason nor an acceptable excuse for people to behave like bloody idiots. Drinking, as far as possible, should lie within the province of manners and consideration, rather than of policing and regulation. Well, it's a nice thought.