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During lockdown South Africa actually banned alcohol sales for quite a long time. It was to have less pressure on hospitals. I actually think it was a good deci
by Synaesthesia 4y ago
During lockdown South Africa actually banned alcohol sales for quite a long time. It was to have less pressure on hospitals. I actually think it was a good decision.
- pixl97 4y agoAll for the low cost of killing those that were already dependant on alcohol.
- Synaesthesia 4y agoThere were ways of getting alcohol for those people who are dependent to that level.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoWhat were those ways?
- ceejayoz 4y agoHuh. Around here, liquor stores stayed open as essential, because severe alcohol withdrawal sends alcoholics to the ICU.
- docdeek 4y agoI suspect it is a trade off: problems for alcoholics if you cut off the supply versus more problem drinkers if you maintain supply but people cannot go to work, spend time with others etc.
- polio 4y agoCould we have required that they only sell vodka, so as to target only alcoholics? Perhaps this would have just made "casual" beer drinkers into more hardcore alcoholics, though.
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- telotortium 4y agoI don't think that would have worked. Even the cheapest vodkas can be made into pretty good-tasting drinks by adding fruit juice.
- nells 4y agoBan people from leaving their homes and then ban alcohol so they don’t kill themselves from the depression. We’re gonna need a bigger hammer.
- thinkharderdev 4y agoIn the US we took the complete opposite approach (at least where I live) and massively deregulated alcohol sales during the pandemic. For example, it became legal for restaurants to deliver alcoholic drinks (including spirits) to people's homes.
- Synaesthesia 4y agoOK, and we see that alcohol related deaths are up by a lot ...
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoWonder how many people it sent to alternative drugs, that were even more harmful to them but won't show up in the numbers as having been victims of government one-size-fits-all policies.
- Spivak 4y agoProbably very few because you can’t just substitute intoxicants like that. People with aud aren’t dependent on being unsober, they’re dependent on alcohol. If they could be swapped like that it would have actually been an improvement because they would have stopped destroying their liver. There are lots of studies that have tried to treat aud with various substitutes as harm reduction, usually weed since the effects are similar, with little success.
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- mozman 4y agoRemember we are all human and cope in different ways. Authoritarian approaches are barbaric. Support groups and mental health should have been deemed essential. The true cost of lockdowns is finally coming to light.
- jonathanlydall 4y agoOur first baby arrived premature in June 2020, middle of no-alcohol lock down in South Africa. Doctor at the time told me the hospital was uncannily quiet despite a pandemic and that it really highlighted how busy alcohol related incidents normally keep them. South Africa is not alone here, but we have a serious culture problem around alcohol. It’s too common that people (middle class, several years out of university people included) drink stupid amounts of the stuff not caring that they become loud and disorderly and apparently often violent. Pretty much every week I see one or more traffic lights were run over on the weekend, no doubt by people doing 100km/h+ on 80km/h roads while drunk. But this does not even seem to be acknowledged as a problem here. Companies like SAB Miller are a major employer, spend fortunes on advertising and probably have major political influence which I’m sure contributes to lack of media attention to the problem. Attempting to ban it would never work (as evidenced by the lock-down ban creating a black market). But ideally, we should be working on making binge drinking culturally unacceptable.
- sokoloff 4y ago> acceptable unacceptable?
- jonathanlydall 4y agoYes, thank you, corrected.
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