Booze ad ban on cards

(Image: GCIS)

Motsoaledi has spent the past year threatening to stop booze adverts and has now announced a time frame for regulations: "Next week".

"I will present Parliament with [draft] legislation next week," he said.

Motsoaledi has urged doctors and academics to support him in his plan to stop the marketing of alcoholic beverages.

Speaking at the launch of two Health Systems Trust medical publications on Tuesday night in Pretoria, Motsoaledi said: "Friends will become enemies.

"Not even during apartheid was alcohol boycotted."

Although the Department of Trade and Industry has expressed its opposition to an alcohol ad ban, Motsoaledi is only worried about the numbers.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Professor Charles Parry of the Medical Research Council says:

• 130 people in SA die each day because of alcohol abuse. Causes of deaths include road accidents, liver diseases, some cancers and HIV - as alcohol promotes risky sexual behaviour;
• Alcohol abuse is estimated to cost the country R38bn a year. This is much more than R2bn spent on alcohol advertising; and
• The World Health Organisation estimates that lifestyle diseases will become the biggest killer and health expense by 2020 worldwide.

Non-communicable diseases include strokes, heart disease, diabetes type 2 and some cancers.

In Motsoaledi's bid to reduce lifestyle diseases, he has already signed regulations to reduce salt in bread - by 2017 - into law, and has banned unhealthy trans fats from food.

Source: Sowetan, via I-Net Bridge