AIBU to think daytime alcohol demand points to a wider problem?

[trainboundfornowhere]

I will preempt this by saying I live in Scotland and am basing this on what I’ve seen. I cannot answer for the rest of the uk. 9.15am and I’m in my local supermarket this morning picking up a few bits. I spot my friend who works there putting a bottle of wine back on the shelf and she says that is the third bottle she has had to put back since the shop opened at 7am (Shops can only sell alcohol between 10am-10pm). The customer is complaining about stupid Scottish rules. Monday they refused to sell alcohol to two people mid afternoon who were heavily intoxicated and Tuesday they had to ask someone who was drinking in the foyer to leave. This is sadly something I have noticed not just in that supermarket but others across the city and that this is a snapshot of a wider problem.

I assume you’re not in Scotland? They won’t let me check out with alcohol in my basket unless I’m in an approved time slot!

The sale of drink restrictions aren't to prevent alcoholics getting hold of booze, because they will find a way. They are to prevent people becoming alcoholics in the first place.

i remember when you couldnt buy it on a sunday afternoon

There was a time when you couldn't buy anything on a Sunday afternoon.

I worked on the legislation about 20 years ago, it was a cock up to shorten the hours due to MSPs messing up the votewhen they meant to extend houurs.

Anyway, if you are a shift worker you want to nip and do your shop at weird hours. It doesn’t mean you are drinking wine at 7am, it means your shift finished and you are trying to do your shop on the way home.

Or you order a shop to be delivered at a 8am, but annoyingly can’t get your wine/beer due to licensing. Not because you want it at 8am, or even that day, that is just when you shop or the time that works.

Also it makes no sense as when you order via Amazon etc it just arrives whenever.

No, that is not the thinking behind it. I was there when they cocked up the legislation.

the whole aisle in the supermarket was closed off

Pubs used to shut EVERY DAY at 3pm. IMO we should bring that back.

A lot of alcoholics drink at home.
Shutting pubs at certain times wont change a thing.

Do you eat every single bit of the food you buy in the supermarket in the car park? You do understand people go shopping for things they then have later?

Where I live (Cairns) there is a specific problem. Many of the indigenous communities on Cape York are dry or have very restrictive alcohol laws. This is always driven by the women of the community. Periodically the men get back in power on community councils and remove the restrictions and the unbelievablety high rates of DV, child sexual abuse and school truancy start again.

For the dry communities on the remote cape, when residents are send to Cairns for hospital appointments, a significant proportion of them stay in Cairns and get into a cycle of drinking all day and night in Cairns parks, rather than returning home to their communities. Cairns, being a major international tourist destination isn’t in a position to declare the city dry, so we try and minimise harm by restricting the sale of cask wine during the day.

It’s worse in Alice Springs where hundreds of people leave their dry or restricted communities and live in the dry river bed of the Todd River and drink and drink and drink. A horrific disaster for everyone, particularly the children who have the highest rates of FASD in the Western world.

Yes I remember working in a pub when I was younger and they closed at 3 pm and didn't open again until 7pm I think, on a Sunday