Health risks pose threat to alcohol marketing

First published in Bolander Lifestyle & Property, August 26, 2009.

Adrian Botha, director of the Industry Association for Responsible Alcohol Use (ARA)

The right to market alcohol beverages in South Africa is under threat, according to Adrian Botha, director of the Industry Association for Responsible Alcohol Use (ARA). “In my 21 years of dealing with this, I’ve never actually experienced such an amount of pressure on the industry as we have now,” he said. Mr Botha was addressing guests at a meeting of Rootstock, a wine industry interest group that meets regularly to discuss and debate issues of importance to the wine industry, at the Kleine Zalze Winery in Stellenbosch last Tuesday evening.

According to Mr Botha, part of the reason for the increased pressure on the industry, is the recent heightened level of interest of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the effects of alcohol. “The WHO looked at alcohol last in 1983, but until recently was not that concerned about [it]. They had asbestos as a big issue, then they had tobacco, but that has changed,” he explained.

The baby out with the bath water

The City of Cape Town's Liqour By-law amounts to little other than throwing the baby out with the bathwater

The City of Cape Town’s restrictive liquor trading by-law is set to come into effect on January 1 next year.  It will, amongst other provisions, reduce the legal trading hours for both on-consumption and off-consumption outlets, in an attempt to curb rising levels of alcohol abuse, and the associated consequences like binge drinking, alcohol-related violence, foetal alcohol syndrome, drunk driving and pedestrian road deaths.

In the course of the mandatory public participation process, which preceded this by-law, the hospitality industry expressed its concern that the proposed restriction in liquor trading hours would have dire consequences. Guest houses and restaurants in residential areas for example, will no longer be able to serve liquor after 9pm.