At Alice Springs in Central Australia there has been an ongoing Grog War between those who would be happy to have a total ban on alcoholic drinks and those who want freedom to drink as they choose. The Territory, having a hot climate and being a place where the "Wild West" attitude has prevailed for decades, is a place where huge quantities of alcoholic beverages are guzzled. It's often said by do-gooders, bleeding-hearts, lesbian activists, medical people, and others that we drink too much. Someone in his/her wisdom decided that a specific quantity of alcohol is too much and that nobody should drink more than that. While there is no doubt a level of imbibing that is inadvisable, it's up to individuals to decide what is too much for them ... or too little for that matter. In the same way that it's up to individuals to decide how much they eat or fart, it's nobody else's business how much they drink.
The problem is, many of the people who choose to drink too much, are black; First Australians. Instead of getting pissed and going home to sleep it off like most other Australians, they hang around the Central Business District destroying property, fighting, urinating, defecating and vomiting on streets, leaving rubbish everywhere, and annoying the hell out of the rest of us. It's certainly not much good for tourism either. I can see it now: "Discounted Fares: Travel to lovely Outback Australia and see an intoxicated, fat, filthy, black woman shitting in the street".
No, it just doesn't help.
So, the solution, over many years now has been to manipulate the times of the day when you can access alcohol, the types available and the quantities in which it is available. This it seems is preferable to tackling the problem because it's politically incorrect to deal toughly with blacks, a protected species in Australia.
Nothing has worked. When you change the quantity of wine people can buy, heavy drinkers who want to get pissed simply change to fortified wines like port or begin buying spirits. Change the location or have a grog free day and the drinkers simply have the booze shipped in from somewhere along the track.
What exacerbates this whole fiasco is that possession of alcohol on the dozens of black communities in the Territory is outlawed. This means that none has an opportunity to develop sensible drinking habits (perhaps by having canteens open three or four hours per day with no take-aways) and they simply move into town making the lives of those of us who live here less pleasant.
Governments need to tackle the problem; remove the cause from the problem or the problem from the cause.
If it's possible to use racially discriminatory policies and laws to benefit blacks by given them special schools, welfare, free housing, free medical, dental, and much more, why can't the government simply pass a law that makes it illegal for blacks to drink and anyone to sell them alcoholic beverages? Wouldn't that be good for them in the same way that giving them welfare and everything else free is to thier benefit?
How long must the rest of us be inconvenienced by restricted trading hours, volume purchasing restraints, having to produce ID when buying alcohol and so on?
When will the government do something to the people causing the problem rather than to those of us who drink sensibly? Until they have the gumption to tackle the real problem, we'll still be discussing this in 20 years from now.
