Edith Moore and the case for alcohol law reform

“Everyone has their own rock bottom,” says Edith Moore.  She should know. Edith has a Master’s degree in health psychology and used to lecture at the University of Auckland’s faculty of medicine. These days she works for DRIVE, an organisation that helps people in the Counties Manukau area who experience addictions or mental health distress.

Before joining DRIVE, Edith spent nearly 30 years living with alcohol addiction. Her rock bottom came when her family took away her car keys, her house keys and her young daughter.“They told me not to contact any of my family,” remembers Edith, “and by that time I’d isolated myself from all of my friends because I was so ashamed. That was when I realised I was homeless and I needed to make a serious effort to get support.”

Edith ignored one of her family’s requests and called her brother, a teacher living in Hamilton.

 “I asked if I could stay with him and he put some really strict boundaries around what that would look like. I’m glad he did; I knew that this was my shot and that if I didn’t take it with both hands, I’d be living under a bridge.”

Edith took her shot, and has been in recovery since 2015. “July the fifth,” she says emphatically. 

 Addressing Booze Culture

As someone with personal and professional experience of alcohol harm, Edith believes our attitudes towards alcohol need to change. 

 “We have to stop seeing alcohol as this innocuous, fun thing, and realise that it’s the most damaging drug New Zealanders are interacting with,” she says.

That’s no easy task; alcohol is part of the New Zealand psyche, inscribed in our culture: rugby, racing and beer; good on ya mate; forget about the last one, get yourself another.

“Alcohol is part of so many of our lives,” Edith admits. “Something good happens, you have a drink; something bad happens, you have a drink. If you go to a 21st, people say it’s bad luck if you don’t have a drink. I have to explain that, believe me, it’s worse if I do.”

Too Many Bottle Stores

Cultural attitudes are reinforced by the easy availability of alcohol. Edith believes her own drinking was enabled, and certainly made easier, in part by the number of bottle stores near her home.

“I had a 15-minute walk in one direction, a 15-minute walk in the other direction, and I would choose which one to go to every day so they didn’t know how much I was drinking.” 

One more bottle store here, another bottle store there – no big deal, surely; they’re just meeting a demand. Perhaps, but Edith points not only to the number of bottle stores, but their proximity to community spaces such as schools. The intermediate she attended in the suburb of Manurewa these days has a liquor outlet two doors away.

“We know that the more children are exposed, the more likely it is for them to hit problematic alcohol use later in life.”  

Alcohol, Local Communities and the Law

Keeping liquor stores out of communities that don’t want them isn’t easy. Under the current law, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012, local alcohol policies (LAP) give councils – and the communities they represent – the ability to assert some control over liquor sales on their patch. 

It’s a good idea. Who better to decide what happens on the corner than the people who live there? In practice, however, it’s often not possible to do so without costly legal intervention or extreme effort on the part of locals.

For example, in April 2021 an application to open a bottle store in Hunter’s Corner, Papatoetoe, was opposed locals and eventually declined.[1][2] However, this apparent victory for grassroots activism was hard won. Despite 16 off-licence premises already operating within two kilometres of the proposed site, it required objections from police, the Medical Officer of Health, support from the local board and nearly 50 pages of submissions from members of the community to prevent the liquor store from opening. Should it really be this hard? Auckland Central MP Chloe Swarbrick doesn’t think so.

Law Changes Will Make a Difference

Swarbrick has put forward a private members’ bill to amend the law and give communities more say in their neighbourhoods. Changes to alcohol legislation, such as those she is proposing, would lend both a symbolic and practical hand to coal-face organisations like DRIVE.

Edith Moore: “Many people don’t come forward because they are ashamed. If we hear our elected leaders saying that alcohol is a social problem, it would take away some of the stigma for people seeking support. And I know that when I was in recovery, everywhere I looked there was a bottle store; the less someone is exposed, the easier it is for them.”

She pauses for a moment to reflect further on her own experiences.

“If alcohol wasn’t so available in my neighbourhood, the frequency of my drinking would have reduced markedly. Because I was drunk every day, I would have had very little capacity [to travel] to get alcohol. I think I would have come into recovery a lot earlier and I don’t think I would have reached the level that I did. It would have had a massive impact.”

If you would like to help advocate for changes to our alcohol laws, please tell your local Decision makers, including MPs, councillors and local boards. Let them know how alcohol is affecting your community and what they can do to change it. For more information about how you can get involved, please contact Community Action on Youth and Drugs at cayad@aklc.govt.nz or on Facebook @cayadauckland.

[1] https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/have-your-say/hearings/find-hearing/Pages/Hearing-documents.aspx?HearingId=431

[2] https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/HearingDocuments/hunters-corner-liquor-agenda-2021-04-28.pdf