Loopholes deliver more alcohol-induced heartbreak

This week, the ACT government's new Drug Strategy Action Plan committed to reviewing how its laws apply to online alcohol sale and delivery "to see whether the current laws minimise harm and if any further regulation is needed".

This is a welcome development.

As companies look to increase their profits, and with technological advances fast outstripping regulation, reform is urgently needed to put the brakes on rapid sale and delivery of alcoholic products to protect the health and wellbeing of our communities.

Right now, alcohol companies are rapidly delivering into the home without the checks and balances we have come to expect as a community, like making sure that strong measures are in place to ensure that alcohol isn't sold to children and people who are intoxicated.

When alcohol is sold online and delivered rapidly into the home, the harms that result are often hidden, happening behind closed doors. These harms include alcohol use disorders, chronic diseases and family violence.

Alcohol retailers used the pandemic to aggressively market their products as a way to cope with the stress and anxiety that many people were experiencing. These tactics paid off for them, with retail sales of alcoholic products increasing by $3.6 billion (29 per cent) from 2019 to 2021, reaching a record $15.9 billion in 2021.

This strategy was effectively designed to maximise profits from people who are most vulnerable. In the real world this translates to maximising alcohol harm. Over the same period, deaths directly relating from alcohol increased and are now at their highest in a decade.

These companies know that selling alcoholic products to people through rapid online delivery results in people being more likely to drink at high risk levels, as established by FARE's 2020 Annual Alcohol Poll which found that almost one in four people who were sold alcohol in this way drank more than 10 standard drinks on the day of delivery.

The dark reality is that rapid online sale and delivery of alcohol exploits legal loopholes to boost profits by selling more and more alcohol to people at risk of harm.

The fact that one of these companies has been investigated over the alcohol-induced death of a man in NSW, after they sold him massive quantities of alcoholic products over an extended period, shows that liquor laws across the country are failing to keep up.

Now, the ACT government has an opportunity to protect the community and minimise the significant harm that alcohol causes, particularly when it is rapidly sold to people at greatest risk.

And this could not be more timely. Australia's largest alcohol retailer, sold $1 billion worth of alcoholic products online in the last financial year after spending $79 million in expanding its digital capacity.

Alcohol retailers rely on the relatively small number of people who drink the most to maintain their super profits, with their marketing model targeting the heaviest drinkers, posing an extreme risk to both their own health, and the safety of people around them.

Data from the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research shows that alcohol companies are reliant on five per cent of the population who drink 36 per cent of all alcohol, drinking an average of eight standard drinks or a bottle of wine a day.

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During the pandemic, alcohol companies collected an unprecedented amount of data on people's alcohol use as sales moved to being online. Alcohol companies are collecting more and more data on who these high-risk drinkers are, and increasingly targeting them in a digital environment where those seeking to reduce or stop drinking simply can't escape.

We need to see commonsense measures that put the health and wellbeing of communities ahead of profits.

Alcohol retailers should have their deliveries restricted to between the hours of 10am and 10pm, with a minimum two-hour delay between when someone places an order and when it arrives to reduce the risk that companies aren't selling alcohol to people who are intoxicated.

Mandated ID checks are needed both when the order is placed - just like in a shop - and when it is delivered. People who are delivering the alcohol also need better training and protections.

And predatory marketing of alcohol to people who are at risk of harm must be addressed.

If these actions are not taken, we will continue to see an increase in alcohol harms and more families will lose loved ones.