Life should come with a warning label
I REFER to Andrew Embleton’s letter, “Alcohol has far worse effects than smoking” (September 28), which ended: “How has the banning of alcoholic drinks escaped the net?”
Why stop with banning alcohol and cigarettes? Let’s go the whole hog and ban the manufacture of sugar — think of all the deaths connected with obesity and diabetes via those dangerous soft drinks and the deadly cups of coffee.
Then we could ban the car and we’d have no accidents at all — think of all those lives saved. And let’s not forget sunbathing — all those skin cancer victims.
Swimming? Yep — no more drowning after a couple of beers. And what about sex? Surely we should ban it — think about those poor souls who have severe heart problems.
Mr Embleton, life is not about the lowest common denominator. — Peter Curtis, Cape Town I TRUST that Andrew Embleton’s excellent analysis of the alcohol scourge will reach the honourable ministers of health and transport, as a counter to the powerful alcohol lobby of Brandhouse, Distell, SAB and many others.
Recent research by two respected political scientists from Northwestern and Princeton universities in the US found that the interests of the wealthy elite and “organised interest groups [read ‘major corporations’] wield a powerful influence on policy formation, which leads to an effective disenfranchisement of the middle class”. Such is the pernicious and subversive nature of politics.
There is therefore a slim chance that the ministers will muster the political will to stand up to these powerful vested interests, not forgetting the hospital groups and the pharmaceutical drug companies — the greater the injuries on our roads, the greater their revenue, in common with the victims of tobacco poisoning.
To make matters worse, “free-market” fundamentalists will oppose any legislation to curb alcohol abuse, as they have opposed the regulations on smoking, on the basis that they curtail individual freedom and usher in the “nanny state”.
Perhaps the only glimmer of hope is that Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma may return as minister of health or perhaps even deputy president on completion of her term of office as chairwoman of the African Union Commission in 2016.
— Mario Compagnoni, Johannesburg