Due to urgent limits on the sale of alcohol, pharmacies in Alice Springs have removed hand sanitizer off the shelf out of concern that desperate drinkers may resort to it.
As other pharmacies have since done, Priceline outlets in the problematic outback town took the bold action in anticipation that the high-alcohol hand cleanser may be targeted.
The town’s bottle stores may only sell alcohol for four hours on other days and are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays due to new restrictions enforced by the Northern Territory government.
The emergency measures were implemented as the government worked to address the root causes of the violent crime wave that has recently overtaken Alice Springs.
The decision to cease selling hand sanitizer was taken knowing that locals were already misusing it, according to Peter Hatswell, co-owner of three Priceline shops in Alice Springs, who spoke to Daily Mail Australia.
He said that the need to get alcohol at any costs ought to be restrained.
“It’s a recipe for tragedy when you have desperate individuals seeking to obtain booze.”
By Wednesday night, Mr. Hatswell anticipates that all of the town’s pharmacies will have removed hand sanitizer off their shelves, including the three businesses he co-owns.
He predicted that by tonight, “all the pharmacies in town communicate to one other and would all be doing the same thing.”
The rural pharmacist, who has spent 16 years visiting Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, said that hand sanitizer is a favorite among problem drinkers due to its 70% alcohol level.
For individuals who misuse alcohol, it offers a great value since it is at least twice as potent as a liquor like whiskey or brandy, he added.
It might permanently damage the esophagus, stomach, or intestines if consumed.
“For now, it’s the greatest thing for public safety,” Alice is seeing such a rise in alcohol misuse.
When hand sanitizers first became readily accessible at the beginning of the epidemic, according to Mr. Hatswell, who personally managed pharmacies in Alice Springs for 25 years, they were misused as a type of alcoholic beverage.
There was definitely a little too much of it being sold and stolen when Covid first came out, he added. “When Covid initially came along, we began to sell big numbers.”
Then there were reports of several empty bottles being discovered in First Nations campers near the Todd River.
It looks that they were drinking it instead of utilizing it as intended, which is very risky and harmful.
We screened every transaction and put it behind the counter to limit it, but that wasn’t enough.
Following discussions with Anthony Albanese’s Labor administration, the NT government reintroduced restrictions on the sale of alcohol for takeout in Alice Springs on Mondays and Tuesdays for the next three months.
On other days, clients may only make one purchase per day in bottle shops, and takeaway alcohol sales are only permitted between 3pm and 7pm.
Longer-term fixes are still up in the air.
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