Alcohol ban ‘poses risk’– experts

LIVELIHOODS: NEED TO BALANCE COMPETING INTERESTS, WARNS COUNCIL

To balance competing interests, the ban on the sale of alcohol in restaurants should not be a long-term solution.

Better regulation of availability, drunk driving and of marketing vital, says official.

As much as the risk of Covid-19 community transmissions increasing if alcohol is allowed to be sold in restaurants is significant so, too, are the livelihoods of South African citizens at risk.

This is according to South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) alcohol, tobacco and other drug research unit director Professor Charles Parry, who said that in order to balance competing interests, the ban on the sale of alcohol “should not be a longterm solution”.

However, this could not take place if suggested measures by the SAMRC were not established, regulated and enforced.

This after the SAMRC put forward ideas to the Ministerial Advisory Council on 7 July.

“One was a modelling of the effect of an eight-week [temporary] sales ban on alcohol and the other was a basket of interventions aimed at better regulating alcohol availability, drunk driving and marketing of alcohol,” said Parry.

If these measures were not effective, Parry warned that a third temporary ban could be imposed.

Especially due to the fact that the illicit alcohol trade is not expected to result in nearly as many non-natural deaths than if the curfew was lifted.

“The illicit trade at the moment in all likelihood is almost entirely industrially produced products being sold illegally, but they are not contaminated products,” Parry said.

This is evident in the “huge drops” of trauma admissions and deaths during the booze ban.

Parry said the ban on liquor sales in addition to a curfew from 13 July had resulted in trauma admissions decreasing across five hospitals in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal by up to 83%.

The ban, therefore, did well to free up hospital beds as per government’s obligation.

And, should the need for more beds arise, immediate interventions in the form of alcohol bans and curfews may need to be implemented again, said SAMRC chief executive Glenda Gray.

“To minimise the impact of alcohol on hospital admissions, alcohol usage requires control.”

So, when will the nation drink again?

Parry said that now that capacity at hospitals has been increased, “we need to have discussions around going back to the basket of interventions to implement when alcohol sales resume”.

He suggested not lifting the ban unless further restrictions were imposed and properly enforced, namely, measures one, two, three, five, six and 10, see right.

Measures four, seven, eight and nine should be considered after three months.