The head of the University of Otago’s National Addiction Centre (NAC) is welcoming a fresh call for supermarkets to be banned from selling alcohol, saying they are using cheap booze as “bait”. The call came in a Hospitality Association of New Zealand (Hanz) submission on the Alcohol Reform Bill to Parliament’s justice and electoral select committee yesterday.

Hanz argued the negative impacts of past alcohol reform was sourced to the availability of cheap alcohol from supermarkets, increasing the availability of alcohol to youths. Supermarkets were also driving binge-drinking by using alcohol as a “loss leader”, sold below cost to attract shoppers. There was a “strong case” for removing alcohol from supermarkets and grocery stores, or risk the worst features of alcohol consumption continuing “unabated”, the Hanz submission argued.

See Full Story by Chris Morris: Otago Daily Times, Tues 8 Mar 2011 http://www.odt.co.nz/campus/university-otago/150763/renewed-call-supermarket-alcohol-sales-ban