New Zealand is an incredibly expensive country to live in and increasingly few luxuries are within the grasp of regular New Zealanders. I think that increasing the cost of alcohol as a means of discouraging consumption will penalise people who enjoy a glass of wine with dinner and are not necessarily part of the pernicious social problem. Better education and working to shift the type of drinking culture in NZ would be more effective. The problem is people drinking to excess and this is a social pressure and reality in NZ. I would like to see the problem