Table of Contents
Cuts to Coro? The Chase cancelled? One too many Zoomers refusing to wait on them hand and foot? Nope, this time it’s not being able to have a few drinks with friends.
“Retirement village residents are calling on the government to lift alcohol restrictions effectively banning them from sharing a bottle of wine over a Christmas BBQ, or having a social drink on their patios.
[…] Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee has been tasked by the government with reforming alcohol sales laws, bringing opposition from alcohol harm groups.
But Nigel Matthews, chief executive of the Retirement Village Residents Association (RVRA), and Michelle Palmer, executive director of the industry body, the Retirement Village Association (RVA), say there would be no harm in McKee allowing villages and their residents to hold occasional social events without having to apply for liquor licences.
[…] Matthews said the average 81 year-old resident of a retirement village wasn’t a threat to the community, and wouldn’t be “tearing up the streets” on their walk back to their unit from a social gathering at their village’s bowling green or community lounge.
Yes, but it only takes one old duck getting sloshed and killing herself tripping over her walker. What are you going to tell her grandkids, hmm?
“Yet police have been contacting villages over the need for liquor licences for social events, and Palmer said several villages had stopped holding happy hours as a result.
[…] Palmer said: “Villages are residents’ home environments. They are just coming together in common areas.”
They said retirement villages that ran cafes and restaurants selling alcohol should continue to need alcohol licences, like every other licenced premises in the country.
However, residents and villages organising BBQs and social events should not need special events licences to do so, they said.”
Sounds like the UK police.
“[…] The exemptions the RVA and RVRA are seeking would allow village residents committees to serve alcohol without a licence on social occasions to village residents, for one-off social events in villages, and at events organised by village operators where alcoholic drinks were served to residents without charge.
McKee says her reforms would result in a “fairer, clearer licensing processes, including ensuring that objections to licence applications come from the local community, and allowing applicants the right to respond to objections”.
[…] The reforms would also allow hairdressers and barbers to supply small amounts of alcohol to customers without a licence, and a low premises like wineries, breweries, distilleries, and meaderies (a word derived from honey-sweetened mead drinks) to hold both on- and off-licences to support cellar door sales.”
Of course the whole thing is ridiculous. Alcohol has been given a pretty bad rap. I know alcohol causes a lot of harm, blah, blah, blah. But you can’t look at alcohol harms with looking at its benefits, particularly its social benefits. And in my opinion the benefits clearly outweigh the harms.
This of course applies to any intoxicating substance. The harm must be balanced against the benefits.
Apart from a glass of Guinness now and then, I’m not drinker. And I’ve also seen the harms of alcohol up close. So I’m not exactly biased.
There’s no good reason why a bunch of friends in what amounts to a private place, or similar, shouldn’t be able to enjoy a few drinks. Just like a group of friends should be allowed to share a joint in the privacy of their home.
If it was up to me I’d say the police are bored with nothing better to do. Or maybe they’ve been looking at the UK and thinking “If it was only like that here…”
