Australia: WA group wants alcohol ban for pregnant women

PERTH - Pregnant women in a West Australian community should be banned from buying alcohol, the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) says. AHA chief executive Bradley Woods says government payments in the Kimberley community of Halls Creek have simply encouraged chronic alcoholics to drink more. Woods said 30 per cent of all children born in Halls Creek had foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and 80 to 90 per cent of all pregnant women in the town were chronic alcoholics. "Halls Creek would be the ideal trial situation given that the medical experts in Halls Creek are saying it has 20 times higher incidences of FAS than anywhere else in WA," Woods said. The WA Director of Liquor Licensing is investigating tough restrictions on the sale of liquor in Halls Creek. The Halls Creek community could face similar restrictions to those imposed on other indigenous communities in the region, including Fitzroy Crossing and Oombulgurri. Woods said the AHA had made submissions for a ban on the sale of alcohol to pregnant women to the director and the WA racing and gaming minister. Licensees in the Kimberley have self-regulated alcohol sales for a number of years, limiting trading hours and the volume of alcohol sold. But moves to stop sales of alcohol to pregnant women had prompted calls of discrimination, Woods said. "It makes it a very difficult situation for them because one, they are seeing the chronic alcohol abuse of these women and legally there's nothing they can do to stop selling to them," he said. Licensees in the region had instituted further restrictions in the past week as payments from the federal government's economic stimulus package flowed. "At the moment, this period now, the last week and the next couple of weeks is the same as what occurred in December when the commonwealth provided these thousands of dollars into the bank accounts of at-risk alcoholics," Woods said. "It is very difficult when there is this massive injection of cash being put into bank accounts with no parameters around them and they go into the bank accounts of chronic alcoholics that are known by health officials. "The commonwealth has been quite irresponsible and it's made our job a lot harder trying to manage these issues." Woods said health services would need to be boosted and education programs put in place if such a ban were introduced