Lo-alc beer suggested to cut road toll

Press, 27 November 1986, Page 3

Lo-alc beer suggested to cut road toll

Low-alcohol beer on tap in hotels instead of normal beer could help reduce the road toll, the Canterbury Hospital Board was told yesterday.

A board member, Mr David Close, suggested asking the breweries to use low-alcohol beer instead of draught beer. He said he suspected most excess drinking occurred with draught beer, and if the breweries wanted to be responsible about alcohol abuse it could help by doing this.

The matter came up because beds at Christchurch Hospital were overloaded with people admitted because of accidents. In September, 82 of the 90 orthopaedic beds were occupied by acute patients, which was delaying patients on waiting lists for routine orthopaedic surgery. Dr Jocelyn Hay said road accidents were often alcohol-related.

She was upset about suggestions to lower the drinking age and to make alcohol available to more

as the health services had to “pick up the pieces” after accidents.

Mr Bill Utley said the problem was not the 600 or 700 people who died each year in accidents but the thousands injured in the same accidents who needed treatment in hospitals.

Mrs June Gardiner questioned the system’s priorities, when one or two patients needing heart transplants each year got “tremendous” attention from the Government and news media, and accident victims were treated as routine. The board discussed Mr Close’s idea, but decided such a move would be better coming from the Hospital Boards’ Association. It decided to prepare a submission to it.

Educating people by teaching them the effects of alcohol on their bodies and what happened in road accidents was probably a better way for the board to campaign against alcohol abuse, said Dr Hay.