Imbibing local beer worse for road safety
Candor trust media release

In teaming up with Land Transport New Zealand to produce dodgy outdated drink driving campaigns the breweries of NZ/Aotearoa are giving their drinkers a sly kiss of death. The local statistics are unequivocal; the most frequent factor stacking the odds for New Zealanders to experience fatal DUI crashes today is extra sublimit swilling - plus tokeing.

In targeting young drinkers with "sobre" rather than "fully clean" designated driver washroom poster campaigns the drug marketers like Lion Nathan, Dominion Breweries are vigorously promoting, by default, the myth that one or two drinks for a population with endemic cannabis use will be "safe as" on roads.

One or two with drinks with cannabis instead places people at double the alcohol limit in risk (Industry Safety Group - fatigue and drugs and driving manual). If the breweries don't know this then they don't know their business. But Candor Trust believes they do know the facts, given the resources available to them. If so they would have the blood of legion patrons on their hands, including an oversupply of young Maori blood. The Maori population has a bulge in the youth demographic, which is the demographic most at risk.

The leading predictor for a male of a crash in their first four years driving is cannabis use not binge drinking, according to Canadian research. Without exception it appears the breweries of New Zealand are treacherous hippocrits for failing to practise alcohol harm reduction by educating youth about their prime risk, in a country with endemic cannabis use. When do these peddlers of road trrauma not have staff turn a blind eye to those intending to drive after pot in the carpark followed by a handle?

Serving food is not something that will keep sublimit drink / drug drivers safe. Many have been the multi fatality crashes, that it is safe to track back to promotion or at best silent condonement by Breweries of driving or being driven by "under the limit drivers" whose impairment is grossly compounded by pot.

Interestingly foreign breweries have had no problem with displaying social responsibility as regards their patrons driving safety. Take Guinness for one example. In the leading 170 pubs and clubs of Northern Ireland, on point posters in bathrooms where Guinness drinkers gather have highlighted the dangers of drink and/or drug driving ever since 2004.

The unsafe safety messages lazily slung together at LTNZ, then planted as attention grabbing though undeserving posters in the loos of bars stocked by local brewers should be corroded by target practise in male conveniences, in quiktime flushed down the Ladies dunny, and then upgraded to contain messages that are fit for purpose.

Kiwis who're interested in receiving better quality road safety measures might even do well to consider protesting the negligence of the "DUI lip service" local breweries, which have allowed LTNZ to infest bars with dated dingbat sole drink drive adverts. Candor members are beginning the movement by switching their custom to breweries that care like Guinness, and would encourage others do like-wise.

ENDS

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