Alcohol as a raffle prize from a health care setting. Yay or nay?

[IsitaHatOrACat]

We've had a debate in our workplace today about this and I'm interested in more views

A local healthcare provider has a Christmas raffle to raise funds to improve the service for users and some of the prizes are alcohol

N.B This is not a specific alcohol reduction service however some users may have issues relating to alcohol use

YANBU: No, alcohol should not be a prize from a healthcare service

YABU: Chill out and enjoy the raffle

There are ways to deal with having alcohol as a prize. You can offer people options / allow them to pick their prize.

You could use different coloured raffle tickets, blue include alcohol, pink no alcohol.

You can have two raffles with one being just for alcohol.

I was surprised my local community shop accept alcohol as raffle prizes. They don't sell it and it never goes in food bank parcels but as a prize is fine.

I think the kind of alcohol given as prizes is different. People with an alcohol problem usually drink cheap alcohol (I know not always) but prizes are usually a bottle of wine / whisky / champagne.

I worked at a private hospital for a couple of years, patients could order from the bar as long as their doctor didn't object.

When my mum was in the hospice towards the end of her life she was allowed alcohol.

I work in a GP surgery. We are given wine or chocolate as a Christmas thank you. Neither are healthy but they are very well appreciated.

Yes. A lot of people enjoy a drink, but are not addicted - myself included. I do understand that it is harmful to overindulge, as I’m a well informed adult, but occasional drinking is not generally a problem for most.

I don’t personally think it’s appropriate, but I wouldn’t be too annoyed about it as long as there was an alternative. So if you win the alcohol or a hamper containing alcohol, you can swap it for something else.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I am not bothered if alcohol is around. I wouldn’t be happy with someone handing me a bottle of it though. And some people with drinking problems have trust issues with family, so turning up home with a bottle of wine could cause a meltdown in their support systems because people will just assume they were intending to drink it. But it can also be really hard to politely turn down gifts of alcohol. No one wants to come across as a miserable old git or ungrateful or to out themselves as someone with an issue.

It would be nice to have AF alternatives and it would just be all around easier for people if they didn’t have to make a big scene about not wanting a gift of booze, completely apart from the ideological issues around it. The alcohol industry certainly does work hard to keep their products in these sorts of environments though, and we know that from their marketing efforts with cancer research, health and wellbeing events, etc.

You're right about bottles of wine ( which is the usual drink) bringing on more ticket sales, we've found that too.

People love to buy the tickets, then put the stubs inside the jars that are for the item on the table that they hope to win.
There are typically more tickets in the jars for the wine & cheese basket than any other item.
The wine really boosts ticket sales.