New look need for liquor prices
Addiction Centre at the Christchurch School of Medicine, calls supermarkets ‘‘drug dealers’’. Dr Nicki Jackson of Alcohol Healthwatch says alcohol is the most harmful drug in society – ‘‘more than methamphetamine, more than heroin, more than tobacco. We don’t want this in our supermarkets.’’
Yes, alcohol is a dangerous drug, but it has also been a part of everyday life for hundreds of years. It contributes to the deaths of 600 to 800 New Zealanders every year, but selling it in supermarkets is only a small part of a much larger and more complex problem.
We have reached the point where we are today after a long history of restrictive liquor laws – everything from licensing trusts, to ‘‘dry’’ suburbs, to 50 years of early closing and the ‘‘six o’clock swill’’.
Until 1987 voters were asked regularly if they wanted prohibition. They didn’t.
Arguably, that legacy has helped create the drinking culture we have now, where 80 per cent of New Zealanders drink, and most do so responsibly, but a significant minority are binge-drinking.
Allowing both beer and wine sales in supermarkets was part of an overhaul in 1989 aimed at creating a more civilised approach to drinking.
Since then we have created a wine industry worth $1.5 billion a year and witnessed the emergence of the craft beer movement. The produce of both is sold on supermarket shelves.
The real problem with alcohol in supermarkets is their expert marketing and aggressive pricing strategies, which can reduce the price of a bottle of wine to the point where someone can be rendered incapable of driving for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
A decade ago, TV adverts told us drinking wasn’t the problem; it was how we were drinking. The problem now is not the booze being sold in supermarkets, but the dangerously rock-bottom prices it is being sold at.
A Ministry of Justice report in 2014 suggested imposing minimum price points of $1 $1.10 or even $1.20 per standard drink to curb harm and reduce the economic drag of alcohol abuse. The Government rejected the idea then, but perhaps it is worth reconsidering if supermarkets continue to cut prices to dangerous levels.