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The case for government‐run liquor stores in the Australian Northern Territory: Looking outside the box in regulating the supply of alcohol
Author(s) -
Room Robin
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
drug and alcohol review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.018
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1465-3362
pISSN - 0959-5236
DOI - 10.1111/dar.12594
Subject(s) - monopoly , repeal , indigenous , jurisdiction , government (linguistics) , population , alcohol consumption , business , political science , demography , law , alcohol , economics , sociology , market economy , linguistics , philosophy , biochemistry , ecology , chemistry , biology
The Northern Territory (NT) stands out compared with the rest of Australia in terms of rates of alcohol-related harms. A dramatic example is the rate of deaths attributable to alcohol—3.5 times as high as the national rate, including twice as high for the non-Indigenous population [1]. An intrinsic element in the problem is that the level of alcohol consumption per person aged 15+ years in the NT is higher than elsewhere in Australia. In 2014, NT consumption, at 12.30 l of pure alcohol per year [2], was the highest in any Australian jurisdiction—26.7% higher than the 9.71 average for Australia as a whole [3]. In these circumstances, it is highly appropriate that the NT government has commissioned a review of ‘how we manage and regulate the supply of alcohol’ [4]. An option which should be considered is for the NT government to take over all off-premise sales of alcohol. Outside of Australia, there is a long history, stretching back to the mid-19th century, of governments monopolising the sale of alcohol because of public health and order concerns [5]. Canada has had provincial monopolies of off-premise sales since the early 1920s, and Norway’s monopoly dates from the same era. The current monopolies in 18 states of the USA mostly date from the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the USA in 1933. Sweden has had alcohol monopolies at the community level since 1850; they were consolidated into a national monopoly over 50 years ago. Australia also has had a history of public alcohol monopolies, but only at the community or municipal level. In a forthcoming book, Brady [6] covers not only the history of community-operated clubs in Indigenous communities (also discussed in [7]), but also the history of municipal hotels in towns along the Murray River in South Australia. A few of the South Australian community hotels still exist, though often they have lost their local monopoly on sales; and there are still some communally owned clubs in remote Indigenous communities. With respect to effects on public health and order, as discussed below, the Australian history is mixed—there are lessons to be learned from it.