Australian Sex Party Tackles Booze, Cigs at Point of Sale

AUSTRALIA—The issues embraced by the Australian Sex Party are certainly not limited to sex. In previous announcements as well as on its website, the first and only political party of its kind has staked out strong positions on drugs, euthanasia, health, religion, education and other issues of import to Australians. Now it is weighing in on alcohol and cigarettes—in particular, the point of purchase sale of these adults-only items. This weekend Robbie Swan, the Party’s public officer, sent out an announcement in support of historian and columnist Dr. Ross Fitzgerald, who has written a recent column in the Australian arguing that “cigarettes and alcohol should be taken out of supermarkets and convenience stores and put into adults only, age-restricted premises.” In his column, titled “Cigarettes and cereal just don’t mix,” Fitzgerald argues that instead of trying to battle the tobacco companies by going after their copyrights, which is what Health Minister Nicola Roxon is currently doing, she should instead attack them at the point of purchase. “If Roxon were serious about bringing smoking rates down she would not bother tinkering with side issues such as packaging,” wrote Fitzgerald. “She'd remove cigarette sales from the main retail outlets and smoking rates would drop overnight.” As mentioned, Fitzgerald is not saying that the sale of cigarettes should be banned outright, but that the place of their sales should shift from grocery stores and other similar retail shops to adults-only premises such as pubs, taverns, nightclubs, adult sex shops and tobacconists and herbal suppliers, of which there are about 10,000 such outlets throughout the continent. He makes the exact same argument with respect to alcohol sales, with the added incentive that limiting their 24/7 availability might work to curtail community and domestic violence, which he believes shares a correlation with the easy access of alcohol. He also argues, with respect to both products, that removing from the view of children the physical exchange of money for booze or cigarettes will also help break the generational acceptability that each now enjoys.  One obstacle to following through on the idea, says Fitzgerald, is the politics of money. “Both the Coalition and Labor's policies on the sale of alcohol and tobacco are partisan and self-interested,” wrote Fitzgerald. “Neither government nor opposition wants to lose the enormous tax revenues involved. Health Minister Nicola Roxon puffs her chest out and roars at the tobacco companies, holding up a generic cigarette packet like a crucifix. This is mere political posturing.” Not for the Australian Sex Party, it isn’t. In his email, Swan posed the following questions. “What do Australia’s major public health agencies think about this approach,’ he asked. “What arguments could be advanced against his proposal and who would advance them? “The AMA, the Cancer Council, the Public Health Association, QUIT and other agencies should be commenting on the proposal,” he further suggested, adding, “The Australian Sex Party supports Fitzgerald's proposals around tobacco sales and some aspects of those around alcohol.” It is an interesting position to take for a group that has argued so strenuously against the proposal by the Australian government to limit the availability of sexual content on the internet, including allowing the filtering of content at the ISP level. But in fairness, the proposal does not seek to eliminate products, but simply limit their accessibility to places frequented by children. In the United States, of course, the availability of cigarettes is ubiquitous; it’s the right to smoke them that is being continuously encroached upon by Big Brothers at the local, state and federal level, all in the name of health. Alcohol is seeing a similar level of control, increasingly at sporting events, where its sale is curtailed, but more aggressively at gentlemen’s clubs around the country, where it is increasingly prohibited altogether, courtesy of the moral police who need mean to wipe these establishments off the face of the earth by means that circumvent the First Amendment, in this case employing secondary-effects arguments that limit hours of operation, and the distance between patron and performer. The Australian Sex Party website can be found here.