Making Tauranga a better place to live - NOT

No doubt Dave Ludlow of Drug-Arm has the best intentions, however, I question his solution to making Tauranga a better place to live by doubling the cost of alchohol!

This is the same scenario as cigarettes and tobacco.

Making them more expensive has its greatest impact on those who can least afford to pay the higher prices - it does not alter their want or need to partake in them.

The first thing that will happen will be an increase in robberies of shops, dairies, clubs and pubs.

Next will be a lucrative black market run by crooks and gangs, selling stolen goods and home-made products of dubious and uncontrolled contents.

The more expensive and illegal you make these things, the more potent and dangerous they become as “dealers” find ways to make them smaller and easier to conceal to hide them from the law.

Next will come home invasions fuelled by people desperate to get hold of expensive, artificially-inflated alchohol.

All of these things impact DIRECTLY upon innocent people - Joe public, shop-keepers etc.

I recommend reading some of the amazing stuff writen by Milton Friedman on drugs and prohibition - It would certainly give you a fresh perspective in your work, and less interference in the rights and lives of those who do NOT have drug and alchohol issues.

Your solution is equivalent to cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.