Baby thrown out with the bathwater

Mmegi Editor | Thursday July 27, 2017 11:36

Trading licence fees for all liquor businesses were again increased, with some rising by as much 100%. Bottle store owners are now expected to part ways with P1,000, while nightclubs will cough up P4,000.

Ostensibly, the tightening of liquor laws and regulations around the sector in general since 2008, has been to clamp down on rising drunkenness, alcoholism and associated ills such as road traffic accidents, HIV/AIDS, crime and the weight on the public health system.

  Few can argue that indeed Botswana has a troubled relationship with alcohol, a problem that cuts across ages, geographies, income levels and backgrounds. A culture steeped in the recreational use of alcohol has to some extent opened the door for abuse, particularly among the younger ages.

National productivity has suffered as drunkenness becomes trendier and more acceptable, while alcoholism has cut a swathe through the youth who should be tomorrow’s future and the elders who should be its guardians. Nevertheless, in attempting to resolve this challenge, government’s “all or nothing” approach has thrown out the baby with the bathwater, a situation evident in the latest increases in licence fees.

Government has sought to firstly sour the alcohol industry for investors, dispirit drinkers and squeeze alcohol naturally out of the country, without necessarily having to ban it.  From the punitive alcohol levy – now at 55%– to the stringent traditional beer regulations, the tighter operating times and higher licence fees, every effort has been made to discourage alcohol consumption.

And therein lies the problem. Once they have tasted of it, no government in the world, in history, has been able to prevent its population from consuming it and neither should it. The objective should rather be to prevent abuse, curb alcoholism and assist those suffering from this addiction.

Countries such as America, which tried and failed to stamp out alcohol in the 1920s, provide pointers on better alcohol abuse strategies, such as curbing underage drinking, increasing penalties on crimes associated with alcohol and providing better rehabilitation for the addicted. 

In this way, the problem of abuse is tackled, which is radically opposite to the government’s current strategy which views consumption as the problem. The alcohol industry supports thousands of entrepreneurs and employees up and downstream, many of these at the lower rungs of skills development, while also providing valuable tax and export revenues to government.

Today's thought

“A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizen’s lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.” 

– Glenn Reynolds