The Impacts of Liquor Outlets in Manukau City Report No
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The Impacts of Liquor Outlets in Manukau City Report No. 1 A review of the international academic literature and New Zealand media reports Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand JANUARY 2012 ISBN 978-1-877373-70-1 (print) ISBN 978-1-877373-71-8 (online) Prepared for ALAC by: Michael P. Cameron William Cochrane Kellie McNeill Pania Melbourne Sandra L. Morrison Neville Robertson Population Studies Centre The University of Waikato Te Whare Wānanga ō Waikato HAMILTON NEW ZEALAND ALCOHOL ADVISORY COUNCIL OF NEW ZEALAND Kaunihera Whakatupato Waipiro o Aotearoa PO Box 5023 Wellington New Zealand www.alac.org.nz www.waipiro.org.nz JANUARY 2012 The Impacts of Liquor Outlets in Manukau City Report No. 1 A review of the international academic literature and New Zealand media reports Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand JANUARY 2012 The Population Studies Centre was established at the University of Waikato in 1982. Any research queries regarding this report should be addressed to Michael Cameron, Research Associate, Population Studies Centre, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Waikato Mail Centre, Hamilton 3240, email [email protected] or ph +64 7 858 5082. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect any official position on the part of the Centre or of the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand. Any general queries regarding this report should be directed to the Alcohol Advisory Council at the following address: © Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand Level 13, Craigs Investment Partners House 36 Customhouse Quay PO Box 5023 Lambton Quay Wellington 6145 New Zealand Phone: +64 4 917 0060 Fax: +64 4 473 0890 [email protected] ABSTRACT There has been significant recent debate over the impacts of liquor outlets on communities in New Zealand. This report reviews two sides to the published debate on the impacts of liquor outlets: the international academic literature and New Zealand media reports. The level of concern about the issue of liquor outlet density is clear from the media review as well as discussions with stakeholders in the community. However, there is a lack of consensus in the academic literature about the nature and extent of any relationship between liquor outlets and outcome variables such as crime statistics – these relationships are likely to be highly context specific. This suggests that further research is needed at a local level in order to investigate whether a relationship exists between liquor outlet density and alcohol-related harms in each location. Keywords: liquor outlets, density, impacts, alcohol, New Zealand ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report is an output of the research programme, ‘Research into the impact of liquor outlets in Manukau City’, funded by the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand (ALAC), and supported by Manukau City Council. The authors would particularly like to thank Matthew Roskruge and Lulu Zeng for their valuable research assistance, Margaret Chartres of ALAC and Paul Wilson of Manukau City Council for their input at various stages of the project, and Jacques Poot for his comments on earlier drafts of this report. LINKS TO OTHER REPORTS This is the first report in a series of five reports commissioned by ALAC in partnership with Manukau City. The research was undertaken by researchers from the University of Waikato between 2008 and 2011. The five reports in The Impacts of Liquor Outlets series are: Report 1 – A review of the international academic literature and New Zealand media reports (this report) Report 2 – Community stakeholder views on the impacts of liquor outlets in Manukau City Report 3 – The spatial and other characteristics of liquor outlets in Manukau City Report 4 – A spatial econometric analysis of selected impacts of liquor outlets in Manukau City Summary report – The impacts of liquor outlets in Manukau City (revised January 2012). The summary report was initially released in March 2010. That report provided short summaries of the content of the main reports cited above. The summary provided for Report 4 contained a preliminary analysis of the impacts. Since the release of the summary report, the authors have presented the preliminary findings at a number of conferences and received additional peer review and feedback on the methodology. The summary report has been revised and re-released (January 2012) with updated information from Report 4. i ii CONTENTS Executive Summary .............................................................................................................................. v 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Method ............................................................................................................................................ 3 3 Review of the international academic literature ........................................................................ 4 3.1 Methods employed in studies of the impacts of liquor outlets ......................................................... 4 3.2 The impacts on alcohol consumption .............................................................................................. 6 3.3 The impacts on violent and other crime .......................................................................................... 8 3.4 The impacts on drink-driving and motor vehicle accidents ........................................................... 10 3.5 The impacts on other outcome variables ...................................................................................... 12 3.6 The New Zealand literature ........................................................................................................... 13 3.7 Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 14 4 Review of New Zealand media reports ..................................................................................... 16 4.1 Linking alcohol and harms ............................................................................................................. 16 4.2 Alcohol, violence and other crime ................................................................................................. 18 4.3 Alcohol and other harms ............................................................................................................... 19 4.4 The drinking culture ....................................................................................................................... 20 4.5 Reports on commercial issues and licensing ................................................................................ 22 4.6 Community concerns ..................................................................................................................... 23 4.7 Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 27 5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 28 6 References ................................................................................................................................... 29 iii iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY There has been significant recent debate over the impacts of liquor outlets on communities in New Zealand. Alcohol-related harm is often linked to the availability of alcohol. Greater availability of alcohol (e.g. through higher density of liquor outlets) is posited to lead to higher consumption of alcohol, which in turn leads to negative social outcomes. Consensus is that this has arisen because of the liberalisation of the sale of alcohol following the Sale of Liquor Act 1989, which allowed the sale of wine in supermarkets and grocery outlets and generated a significant increase in the number of outlets supplying alcohol. There is currently little specific empirical evidence for or against further changes to licensing laws, other than relatively general research related to the availability of alcohol. Indeed, the local community is seeking an evidence base to support liquor licensing changes (McNeill et al.,2012). The community’s need for strong empirical evidence underlines the need for research in this area to be undertaken. This report therefore has two aims: (i) to review the international academic literature on the impacts of liquor outlets and in particular the impacts of liquor outlet density; and (ii) to review the New Zealand media reports related to the impacts of liquor outlets. The academic literature and media reports represent two sides to the published debate on the impacts of liquor outlets. Overall, the international academic literature provides mixed results for the relationship between liquor outlet density and a range of outcome variables. While some studies have clearly shown negative consequences associated with liquor outlets, others have failed to show any significant effects. The wide range of results and methodologies employed makes it difficult to arrive at general conclusions about the relationship between liquor outlet density and outcome variables. Further, it is likely that these relationships are highly context specific, as well as varying temporally, spatially and by the type of outlet considered. In media reports, three main themes emerged in relation to liquor outlets. Firstly, the dominant view was that there were too