Call for supermarket booze ban

Supermarkets slammed as ‘mega-drug dealers’ as doctors back calls for an end to booze sales
Stuff co.nz 4 August 2017
Family First Comment: The Medical Association wants an end to heavy discounting, and a rise in alcohol taxes.
#reducingalcoholharm
The Medical Association has added its voice to calls for an end to supermarket booze sales.
Association chairwoman Kate Baddock said doctors wanted to blunt the availability of cut-price alcohol, which blighted so many people’s lives.
“Alcohol causes diseases in ordinary people. Not only does it cause harm in the liver, but it’s associated with an increase in breast and bowel cancer as well as cancers of the mouth, throat, stomach and liver.”
The association wants minimum pricing for alcohol, as well as higher taxes, to stop supermarkets discounting alcohol, and to reduce young people’s exposure to it.
Alcohol Health Watch director Nicki Jackson said the powerful liquor lobby – the big breweries and “supermarket monopolies” – stifled any attempt by councils to introduce alcohol harm reduction policies, by smothering them with legal challenges that resulted in watered-down compromises.
“Booze is the most harmful drug by a country mile – and we put it in our supermarkets,” she said. “It’s more hazardous than tobacco, heroin or methamphetamine, yet we still put our focus on illicit drug reform.”
Doug Sellman, director of the National Addiction Centre, said stopping the “mega-drug dealing business” of selling booze in supermarkets would be a giant leap in reducing alcohol-related harm.
Banning liquor from supermarkets would “curb the activity of these drug dealers and would be a huge step forwards in changing the heavy-drinking culture”.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/95435119/supermarkets-slammed-as-megadrug-dealers-as-doctors-back-renewed-call-for-an-end-to-booze-sales