Beer, Tobacco and Buai Curbs

Frank Senge reports on efforts to control abuse of PNG’s most popular drugs.

WHEN Mr David Unagi, Liquor Licensing Commissioner for the National Capital District In terim Commission Port Moresby’s city council announced in May that all ma jor supermarkets would cease to operate their liquor outlets, it looked like just an other liquor ban, one of the many that have been tried and found wanting in PNG.

The main stores, Steamships and Bums Philp, refused to comment on the move, knowing that keeping silent in the past had helped. Such announcements are as reg ular as the changing of governments.

The real motive of the move became clear later. Curbing the drink problem was only a side issue: the authority was in real ity embarking on a course ultimately to transfer all the retail stores in the capital from foreign owners to nationals.

Mr Unagi said his decision was not anti investment, as his critics have claimed.

“Genuine investors will admire our new found common sense,” he said. “We look ridiculous at present allowing foreigners to retail our basic staples to us.”

The decision was gazetted and is now

in force. Supermarkets thus banned from selling liquor can let their office space to a national under the new law.

Mr Unagi has promised that if his plan were defeated in court (should one of the affected businesses take the matter for le gal interpretation) he would introduce a Private Member’s bill to Parliament to ban foreign companies from retailing beer and spirits throughout the nation.

At the same time the city councils of Port Moresby and Lao are making a major drive to curb buai (betel nut) chewing and smoking. In April, the Morobe provincial government cabinet approved an appli cation from the Lae City Interim Author ity to ban the chewing of betel nut and smoking in theatres and conference rooms and on public transport.

The authority spent much of the month of May conducting an awareness cam paign in the city. City general manager Richard Moaitz said the reaction had been “surprisingly good”. He had been “dread ing” public response when he announced the measure, but the reaction had been congratulatory calls and letters.

Mr Moaitz said he had been told he was a “black colonial”, referring to similar measures under the Australian adminis tration. “I wish to tell my critics that it is time standards were established for the good of the whole community,” he said.

Any person caught breaking the anti-buai and anti-smoke laws will be under new public nuisance rules.

In Port Moresby, the National Capital District Interim Commission is also cracking down on buai chewing and smoking on public transport, with similar penalties being imposed.

There have been previous attempts at banning smoking: an Act of Parliament outlaws smoking within government pre cincts, but nobody has taken note to date; and a Public Service circular of January 14, 1988, prohibits smoking in govern ment buildings on threat of dismissal. But even that has not worked.

Only one other town authority Go roka was crazy enough to impose a buai ban in 1985. It was a disaster: instead of officers chasing buai chewers, the chewers almost mugged the officers. □