What can we do to discourage irresponsible promotion of alcohol?

Do the best by everyone; work swiftly toward NZ made; anything bought from overseas will attract a huge contribution to maintaining the high maintenance level alcohol exacts on every single individual in Aotearoa. This is not a legal issue; this is a matter of urgent family safety. Legislate. The small scale internal opportunies for all alcohol producing companies in Aotearoa hold a bated breath fascination for me. Alcohol is burdened by constant ego-mania. This is juvenile behaviour at an international level and our youngsters deserved far better examples from us.

Given the huge cost at personal level and society at large, I feel we need to restrict alchol in more ways than we do currently.

I am a marketeer and from my experience if a marketing campaign doesnt work it ceases, so if advertising of alcohol didnt work the companies wouldnt do it!

The arguement that it is legal so why shouldnt they advertise, doesnt take into account the huge costs to society.

Alcohol is easily as harmful as tobacco, we have banned virtually all promotion of tobacco, including sponsorship, except point of sales, we need to do the same for alcohol.

Overseas research would also indicate that,especially with younger people, increasing price with higher taxes reduces consumption, this should be seriously considered especially for newer products such as Alcohol pops - where in Germany taxes were increased to those of ordinary spirits and amount of consumption by teenagers droped dramatically.

In terms of social marketing - currently the amount allocated to this by Govt compared to the advertising budgets of the Alcohol companies results in a totally uneven playing field, as Govt are highly unlikely to significantly raise the $ for social marketing, then the easiest and most obvious option is ban liquor advertising.

While we allow continue to sponsorship and advertising of what is a signifiant drug, its hardly suprising we have problems..

The liqour companies know the writing is on the wall, so they have come up with some very suttle advertising/promotions, whilst giving the impression that they are committed to supporting sports bodies etc. I can't think of a rugby NZ Super 14 or NPC team that does'nt carry some liquor advertising on it's playing strip. Many of the players are idolised by youngsters, who consequently will link success with liquor.

When I go down to my local rugby club, I see the goal pads, sideline flags, and some hoardings advertising alcohol. It is inevitable that the young players will grow to see the link between rugby and liquor as the norm.

Rugby League has been targeted also, with Lion Red prominent on the NZ Warriors strip.

For me, nothing short of a complete ban of the advertising or promotion of liquor is acceptable. The advertising rules which apply to tobacco products, must also be applied to liquor.

It doesn't matter what is done, anti-social drinking will always happen. All human cultures do drugs. The Muslim religion comes closest to stopping people from drinking but even their hard-core approach isn't completely successful.

Q. When did cities begin introducing liquor bans?

A. After the sale of alcohol was permitted in supermarkets - there was no need for them before that.

The introduction of cheap liquor in supermarkets has been a major contributor to the problems we now face, followed closely behind by bulk liquor outlets selling cheap RTDs.

Collectively, these outlets have drowned the communites in chear liquor with the support of the breweries and suppliers by way of bulk purchase discounting.

Why should it be that the genral public can purchase alcohol at a cheaper price than a publican who, by the way, in most circumstances, provides a safe, supervised environment for drinking.

During the recent Undie 500 troubles in Dunedin, supermarkets stocked up on huge quanities of alcohol and ran massive specials to make sure they got their financial cut of the mayhem that ensued.

It is these sort of promotions that need to be curtailed. There need to be stricter controls in place regading pricing right from the manufacurer/supplier down to the retailer.

This should also help address problems on-licence premises are experiencing due to the availability of cheap liqour from supermarkets. It had an effect, to some extent, when supermarket sales were introduced; but now, with the combined weight of this and the anti-smoking legislation that was introduced, many licencees are finding their livelihoods threatened. (And fair enough... why should I pay $9 for a litre of beer when I can get it from the supermarket for around $4/litre.)

Let's turn the tables - ensure that supermarkets pay more than on-licence premises for their stock. It's probably impossible but it would get a lot of drinking back into supervised environments.

[Edit] Also, enforcement agencies should perhaps put more emphasis into breaches of the liquour laws by lecensees serving already intoxicated patrons rather than setting up stings for serving under-ages. After all, it's that intoxicated punter (or should I say "munter") that causes all the problems of the street or on his return home.

Just my 2c worth.