Liquor ban cedes control of the alcohol market to the criminal underworld
Claims that it reduces deaths and hospital emergencies are flawed
● Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase “nothing is certain in life except death and taxes”. There is another certainty: the legal prohibition of alcohol is not sustainable and does not work.
It results in resistance, defiance, bootlegging and illicit breweries and distilleries of potentially adulterated beverages of unknown and unregulated potency.
Prohibition also leads to increased crime, violence and justice system corruption, beginning with the police.
In the past, SA’s prohibition forbade black people from consuming “European” liquor. Enacted in 1927 to “prevent drunkenness among the natives”, the law was tightened and fiercely enforced during apartheid. It spawned a thriving illicit home-brew industry, sophisticated underground liquor networks and the emergence of the legendary “shebeen queen”, now part of township folklore. Dedicated police units conducted violent and often deadly search-anddestroy raids that engendered fear and loathing in communities.
Reminiscent of the 1960s apartheid raids are recent images of police raiding neighbourhoods, uncovering and spilling home brews, harassing women and lining up men at gunpoint. Prohibition in SA and the US (which Winston Churchill called “an affront to the history of mankind”) are shameful periods in their history.
A report in the Sunday Times of May 10 asserted that the “Booze ban halves violent deaths”. It claimed that the reduced number of alcoholrelated emergencies in the hospitals and clinics was due to the ban on alcohol sales.
The reliability of predictions based on any model is contingent on the methodological integrity and on the quality of the input data or assumptions upon which the model is predicated. Foundational assumptions were based on a belief more than on any hard data. The belief that alcohol-related violence trauma cases will reoccur in trauma units if alcohol sales resume is an unsubstantiated and self-fulfilling assumption.
Another assumption is that there is no alcohol in the communities during a ban, and that its lifting would lead to a resurgence in emergency admissions.
In reality, the ban cedes control of the alcohol market to the criminal underworld. SA’s black market supplies the demand, aided by corrupt police. Many liquor stores and outlets are being burgled and trucks carrying alcohol hijacked.
Alcohol is largely available to those who want it, and those are likely to be the hard drinkers. Home brewing has also shifted into high gear.
The much-touted benefits of the alcohol ban of reducing alcohol-related injury admissions — independent of the larger impact of the lockdown itself — has not been demonstrated, and relies instead on beliefs in what may be the classic case of confirmation bias. It is unacceptable to rely on the belief that if the ban were lifted, people will not confine this to their homes.
Putting aside the stereotyping of people living in high-density neighbourhoods, this generalisation is not evidence, nor is it a satisfactory foundation on which to build a model.
It is more plausible that closing shebeens and taverns and strict enforcement of the stay-athome order reduce injury admissions to hospitals. Countries in lockdown, but without the alcohol ban, have also seen their emergency admissions significantly plummet.
The ban is also costly. There is a loss in trade for liquor store owners and others in the chain.
A fledgling brewery, owned by an enterprising black woman, is about to collapse. Banning exports has wreaked havoc on the export of SA’s renowned wine and ciders. The government is losing tax revenue needed to revive an economy devastated by the lockdown.
The inconvenience and deprivation for citizens are unquantifiable. Then there are the issues of human rights and inequality. The ban hits the economically disadvantaged the hardest. The well-off could lay up stores in advance of the ban, while the poor are obliged to obtain their alcohol from illicit sources at inflated prices.
There are the material and human costs in the often confrontational enforcement and monitoring of the ban. All these costs far exceed the value of projected saved hospital beds.
None of this is meant to sugar-coat or condone irresponsible drinking. Indeed, of the commonly used psychotropic drugs worldwide, alcohol is the most dangerous. Problem drinking is particularly rife in SA. Alcohol addiction is a deadly illness that requires specialised treatment, and imposed “cold turkey” abstention during the lockdown is a setup for serious and life-threatening complications among those who are addicted.
The overwhelming majority of South Africans who drink alcohol are social drinkers. In a country famous for its wines and beers, the ban is an intrusion by the government in their private lives.
History has taught us painful lessons that banning drugs, including alcohol, does not work.
Ceding control to the criminal underworld and police corruption has serious long-term consequences, among them the erosion of respect for the law.
When bootlegging, home-brewing and widespread consumption of illicit alcohol are condoned by the community, even the most lawabiding citizens redefine for themselves what constitutes criminal conduct.
The ban on alcohol (and cigarettes) is unsustainable and runs the risk of undermining public goodwill and alienating citizens who expect and deserve to be treated like adults, with respect and trust.
Proper legal regulation, combined with the upliftment of marginalised communities, not prohibition and criminalisation, is the answer to the misuse of psychotropic substances.