The wowsers are like rust – they never stop

Stuff reports:

Selling alcohol at some school fundraising events may violate the right of children in the eyes of the United Nations.

That is the view of Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, which has vowed to start opposing applications for alcohol sales at school functions where children are present.

Well if that is how they used their taxpayer funding, how about we take it off them and give it to a DHB that focuses on making people better, not pushing wowserism.

A paper going before the board later this month said that Hawke’s Bay schools may be particularly prone to selling alcohol as the region was known nationally and globally for its strong wine industry, which was a large local employer.

Oh the poor dears. They live in a region with a wine industry. How upsetting for them.

Between March 2014 and October 2017, 139 special licenses were granted to schools in the region, of which 39 per cent were for primary or intermediate schools, 29 per cent were for secondary schools and six per cent were for early childhood centres.

Most were from higher decile schools and most were for quiz, casino, bingo, movie or auction nights. Most events had children present.

There is nothing wrong with kids seeing adults drink alcohol in moderation in an appropriate setting. Treating it as something so bad it must be hidden will just make it more attractive.

Allowing alcohol to be consumed in school settings normalised and increased the perceived acceptability of alcohol use, and using children to promote the sale of alcohol at some events may contravene the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, which required signatories – including New Zealand – to “prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of [narcotic and psychotropic] substances”, the paper said.

What planet are these DHB people on. That is a convention about child labour and illegal drugs. To try and say it applies to having a wine at a quiz night at a school is demented.

In Hawke’s Bay. opposition to applications for any future events on school grounds and where children are likely to be present “will increase substantially”, the board said.

Let them. They become such zealots that the local licensing authorities will learn to just ignore them.

Rachel Eyre, who leads the board’s alcohol strategy, told Stuff its position was that “alcohol and schools don’t mix” and ideally there would be no alcohol at school functions, whether children were present or not.

Why not just campaign to bring back prohibition.