Our problems with liquor as a society come from very far - ‘regulation’ of the throats of black people in the last century. Not even one hundred years ago, Union of SA set up an economic commission where one of the issues was how best to ‘regulate alcohol’ in black community...

... the 1930 Native Economic Commission headed by a Prof Holloway, was interested, especially white Native Affairs officials came before it, on which worked best, prohibition or regulated ‘home brewing and sale’? They even asked whether municipal beer halls wouldn’t be better...

... they later chose a combination of municipal beer halls (which generated revenue that seldom went into building anything), heavy policing of home brew by women; all while allowing wages to be paid in liquor in some parts of the country...

... what it did, was to mysticize liquor as something unattainable, clouded in danger; and effectively monopolize its production through its beer halls, subsidizing its hand picked producers of ‘mbamba’ and other liquor they sold ...

I bet some people who are still alive remember the policing of what people drank vividly; and unsurprisingly it’s cost, availability and product variety, make it a vice of choice, for many who wittingly and unwittingly see it as a marker of social value or inevitable escape.

... I thought of this in the context of the Liquor Amendment Bill - if advertising creates desires as Watkins said, is it enough of a solution to pull liquor advertise to stop youngsters from ‘aspiring’ to the cool of holding an ice cold dumpy?