Aug 2nd 2012, 8:47 by R.M. | SYDNEY
THOMAS KELLY'S first night out with his girlfriend in the Kings Cross district of Sydney on June 7th also proved to be his last. A stranger appeared and punched Mr Kelly to the footpath; he died in hospital two days later. Sydney’s night-life hub, Kings Cross has witnessed much violence over its raucous history. Few incidents have sparked as big a public outcry as the unprovoked attack on Mr Kelly, an 18-year-old student.
Experts blame the violence on liberal alcohol laws. Kings Cross now has 193 venues licensed to sell booze, 19 of them around the clock. Police have charged an 18-year-old man with Mr Kelly’s murder; they have not said if alcohol was involved. But Don Weatherburn of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, a state agency, says the 213 assaults reported in Kings Cross in the year to March [2012] were probably half the actual number; 86% were alcohol-related.
As bar numbers and trading hours grow, critics point the finger at the alcohol industry’s lobbying power. Bars in New South Wales, the most populous state, once had to shut at 6pm. Many now never have to shut. John Kaye, a state parliamentarian with the Greens party, says the industry has “effectively written” the state’s alcohol laws. Prompted partly by the Greens, the state parliament two years ago passed legislation banning donations to political parties from the alcohol, gambling and tobacco industries; the ban does not apply to the parties’ federal counterparts.
Mr Kelly’s death has sparked pressure for the state government to replicate in Kings Cross an example set by Newcastle, a city north of Sydney. After a campaign against alcohol-fuelled violence there four years ago, closing times at 14 central pubs were wound back two hours to 3am; new drinkers were locked out from 1am. Street assaults in the early hours fell by 37%; in a neighbouring district, with no such restrictions, they rose by 9%.
George Souris, the state minister in charge of alcohol laws, protests that new conditions could drive the industry “underground”. Paul Nicolaou, head of the Australian Hotels Association, a lobby, shifts the blame for street violence to a “global problem of drugs”. Before he joined the association, Mr Nicolaou worked as a fundraiser for the conservative Liberal Party, the state government’s senior coalition partner.
Yet the Australian Institute of Criminology, a federal body, says violence is twice as likely to spring from alcohol as from other drugs. Australia, it says, has a culture of “drinking to get drunk” around entertainment and social events. Mr Kelly’s tragic death seems to have triggered a groundswell for governments to confront that culture.
Drugs policy
Дата добавления: 2015-11-14; просмотров: 78 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая страница | | | следующая страница ==> |
| As puritanical rules retreat, the American market for beer and spirits is growing more competitive | | | Reefer madness |