There's a huge groundswell of kneejerks about at the moment who look about, as our forebears did at the bodgies and widgies hanging around milkbars, and fret about "doing something". Inevitably that something is to complain about the number of liquor licenses issued, as if this somehow affects the amount of alcohol people purchase and consume.
To me it's a no-brainer - if your hick town has ten liquor shops and you somehow manage to manipulate the planning laws to get it down to one, you're not going to decimate the quantity of liquor that people purchase. All that's going to happen is that the one shop that's left will get ten times the business. Likewise with bars - if you decimate the number of bars all that will happen is that you get a small number of very large ones. Since when has concentrating large numbers of drunk people in one place ever reduced crime and vandalism?!!!
Unfortunately we already have a case study of what happens with draconian liquor laws: West Auckland. The West is controlled by Soviet Liquor the Trusts and nobody else can sell alcohol there unless it's in a restaurant with a meal. Do you think Westies have such a notorious stereotypical reputation for hard-drinking by accident? Reducing the liquor licences does not solve the liquor problems.
The irony is that the liquor laws actually encourage a proliferation of outlets. The reason for this is the restrictions on the sale of spirits. Because bottle shops operate in a regulated market where only they can sell spirits, it encourages the existence of more of them. Allowing supermarkets to sell spirits (as they do in Britain) would force many of them out of business, ensuring the shops that remained were not only easier to police, but also making them specialise more to compete, which would work to make the trade more upmarket. Supermarkets also have a greater interest in policing themselves, since their turnover is higher and their profits are not 100% from liquor. It is rare for supermarkets to be caught selling liquor to minors, but far more common amongst bottle shops.
I would say that the majority of cases where shops are charged with making illegal sales occur not with staff who hold manager's certificates, but those who don't. Unfortunately, while there has to be a Manager on duty at all times on a licensed premises, the staff themselves do not have to be qualified in any way. This should be changed, and everyone selling liquor should at least hold a Licence Controller Qualification. The training that managers go through makes a huge difference to their judgement in most cases.
Those are the two main problems with the liquor laws in this country. Naturally it's not going to stop the wowsers and whiners to change them, but there would certainly be an improvement in societal attitudes to alcohol over time. But in case anyone missed it:
Restricting things people enjoy doesn't work!
Banning things people enjoy doesn't work!
DISCLOSURE: I'm a Liquor Licensing Consultant, so this is my line of work. We'd benefit hugely from having all staff trained, although possibly not so much from supermarkets selling spirits.
Ropati's story raised far more questions than it answered. His assertion that the woman would not tell him where she lived, for example, is bizarre. That suggests she was either too drunk to tell him and he wasn't enquiring hard enough, or that he didn't ask in the first place. Neither reflects well on him, and both suggest he had no intention of taking her home, as he indeed later did not do, and that there was no consent involved.
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