Chamber, beverage alliance call for review of legal drinking age bill

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TT Cham­ber) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bev­er­age Al­co­hol Al­liance (TTBAA) are call­ing for a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­view of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to change the le­gal age for pur­chas­ing al­co­hol.

In a joint state­ment, the or­gan­i­sa­tions said they sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment's ob­jec­tive of pro­tect­ing young peo­ple from un­der­age and haz­ardous drink­ing but ar­gued that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion should un­der­go fur­ther scruti­ny be­fore be­ing fi­nalised.

Both or­gan­i­sa­tions said they had nev­er con­doned al­co­hol con­sump­tion by mi­nors and sup­port­ed strong, well-en­forced laws gov­ern­ing the le­gal age for pur­chas­ing al­co­hol.

They al­so pledged to sup­port manda­to­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion checks, re­tail­er train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion across the li­censed trade, re­gard­less of the min­i­mum age Par­lia­ment ul­ti­mate­ly ap­proves.

How­ev­er, the TT Cham­ber and TTBAA said leg­is­la­tion of such sig­nif­i­cance should be con­sid­ered along­side the com­plet­ed Na­tion­al Al­co­hol Pol­i­cy and the na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion process pre­vi­ous­ly out­lined by the Gov­ern­ment.

They rec­om­mend­ed that a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee ex­am­ine the avail­able ev­i­dence on pro­posed age thresh­olds, penal­ties, en­force­ment ca­pac­i­ty and pos­si­ble un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences of the leg­is­la­tion.

Among their con­cerns is the po­ten­tial for stricter re­stric­tions to dri­ve con­sumers to­wards un­reg­u­lat­ed or il­lic­it sources of al­co­hol.

The or­gan­i­sa­tions said a struc­tured, ev­i­dence-based re­view would help en­sure the leg­is­la­tion was prac­ti­cal, pro­por­tion­ate and ef­fec­tive in achiev­ing its pub­lic health ob­jec­tives.

They al­so stressed that pub­lic pol­i­cy should be sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence, be en­force­able and be sub­ject to clear eval­u­a­tion against mea­sur­able pub­lic health out­comes.

Par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion, they said, should be paid to pro­vi­sions af­fect­ing adults be­tween the ages of 18 and 20, in­clud­ing the na­ture and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of any penal­ties im­posed.

The two or­gan­i­sa­tions said they were pre­pared to pro­vide Par­lia­ment with com­par­a­tive ev­i­dence and da­ta from oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions to help leg­is­la­tors as­sess the im­pli­ca­tions of the pro­posed pro­vi­sions and de­ter­mine which ap­proach­es would be work­able in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

They re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment, Par­lia­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers to re­duce al­co­hol-re­lat­ed harm and strength­en pro­tec­tions for young peo­ple.

The TT Cham­ber and TTBAA said they were al­so will­ing to con­tribute re­search, ex­per­tise, re­sources and the col­lec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence of their mem­bers to sup­port a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to the leg­is­la­tion.

They main­tained that the ob­jec­tive should be to achieve ef­fec­tive laws, stronger en­force­ment and sus­tain­able re­duc­tions in al­co­hol-re­lat­ed harm across Trinidad and To­ba­go.