Clouded judgement

A recent event billed by promoters as “a Gin & Tonic based weather system for your tongue”, ended its run on 25 September. Part of the 2015 Brisbane Festival, it both trivialised and glorified the consumption of alcohol.

While the gin cloud has now lifted and the skies over Brisbane, Australia are clear, questions remain and concerns linger over why such an irresponsible promotional activity was ever allowed to proceed in the first place.

Alcohol has never been more readily available, more heavily promoted and as cheap as it is today.

Now it’s even in the very air we breathe.

The G&T Cloud Experience, described as a gin and tonic immersible cloud was part of the Fear and Delight dinner and stage show at South Bank Brisbane that saw patrons don protective clothing before entering a small room to breathe in the gin and tonic infused vapour.

It’s worth noting that the ‘protective clothing’ in question was designed to protect your clothes, but not your person, and in no way addressed the potentially harmful effects of the alcohol vapour.

Perhaps not surprisingly, little research has been conducted on the health effects of breathing in alcohol, but we do know that alcohol is a toxic and cancer causing chemical.

Furthermore, alcohol vapour is absorbed through the mouth, nasal passages and eyeballs, and as such absorbed directly into the bloodstream. It isn’t metabolised by the stomach, nor processed by the liver.

The result: alcohol flows directly to the lungs and brains, both faster and in a stronger concentration than it would otherwise do, increasing the risk of an accidental overdose.

Make no mistake. This was no harmless party trick.

Worse still, this part of the show was sandwiched neatly between a “preshow banquet featuring artisan wines” and an after-show party with “courageous cocktails and delicious drinks”.

I believe that in painting alcohol as a benign product, a harmless gimmick associated with having a good time; the promoters of the G&T Cloud Experience breached the Queensland Liquor Act and set a dangerous precedent for other similarly irresponsible activities.

All this at a time when alcohol harms, not just in Queensland, but around the nation remain unacceptably high.

Alcohol is not an ordinary commodity. It is a dangerous and harmful drug, and Australia cannot allow alcohol to be further normalised.

Before you argue, ‘artistic freedom’, allow me to point out, that despite any artistic pretension to the contrary, the G&T Cloud Experience has its roots in the big alcohol-infused end of town.

Its creators, the London-based Bompass & Parr may have made a name for themselves creating architectural models out of jelly.

But along the way the company has amassed a client list of globally recognised heavy-hitters, Mercedes, Louis Vuitton, and Diageo.

Bompass & Parr worked with Diageo to design the Guinness Tasting Rooms which opened in Dublin in August 2013.

And in July of this year, Bompass & Parr opened its first walk-in cloud bar in London.

Of course the alcohol industry has long had its tentacles in the art and music scene.

To date its efforts had been limited to the marketing and branding of events, concerts and festivals.

Yet with the G&T Cloud Experience, the product is now centrestage; star and sponsor are one.

It is worth also contrasting and comparing the positive regulatory and industry responses to the possible introduction of powered alcohol, ‘Palcohol’, earlier this year.

Victoria introduced a ban on 1 July this year, followed by New South Wales the same month. Queensland has indicated that they too would be move to ban such a product.

Why were regulatory authorities and governments able to move so swiftly and decisively?

Was it simply the absence of pressure from an alcohol industry establishment that was happy to support the powdered alcohol ban and in turn, defend its own turf from a competing ‘outside’ product?

Of course the G&T vapour bar is a different beast altogether.

You might be consuming the alcohol differently, but you’re ultimately still consuming the same alcohol products.

Drink in it, bathe in it, breathe it in, but whatever you do keep on buying it, and to hell with the risks, may well be the mantra of the alcohol industry.

FARE wrote to the Queensland Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation (OLGR) on 4 September 2015 outlining our concerns.

OLGR’s belated response arrived the following month, long after the G&T cloud had dispersed.

Its response was too little too and too late; a weak and flat-footed response. In allowing the event to go ahead, OLGR risks giving the impression that it has become captive to the alcohol industry.

OLGR did promise to monitor future industry requests and to conduct research to determine whether liquor in vapourised form should be declared an undesirable liquor product in Queensland.

That’s a promise I sincerely hope doesn’t evaporate, and one I fully intend holding OLGR to.