I need to say upfront that I’m a partner in a business that sells alcoholic drinks. Gin mostly, but we do – sorry did – a bit of everything. Of course, I’m aware that there are many other industries and entrepreneurs in the same boat; other businesses that, prior to lockdown, also had businesses with exciting prospects.

Ours had grown from a startup that I ran from my parent’s dining room table (thanks mom) to a business of 70 people and plans to take over the world.

But I’m not writing today only as someone whose livelihood, and those of the 70 people who have entrusted their careers with us, depends on our ability to sell our wares. I’m also writing as a citizen, increasingly confused by what our government is hoping to achieve with the alcohol moratorium they have in place.

Alcohol ban no silver bullet

SA and a handful of other countries have decided to ban alcohol sales during lockdown – Greenland was one of the places that enacted something similar. If countries had opposites, I think Greenland might be ours. The place is a gigantic ice block where about 60,000 people live, and I’m just not sure that we have enough in common with them to be copying their best practise when it comes to banning alcohol sales.

As an intriguing, but totally unrelated fact, parts of Greenland also ban burials: it’s so covered in permafrost that its practically impossible to bury someone; if you try, the body never decomposes and often gets pushed back up by the frost. Anyway, I digress.

I think most of us grimly nodded when we were told the country was going into lockdown a few weeks back. Given how scary some of the prognosis looked, it seemed like the only solution – slow this thing down and give the hospitals some time to prepare for the unprecedented numbers of people they were going to be treating, as the virus inevitably infected more and more people. “Flatten the curve!” we shouted from the rooftops.

Despite recent data that seems to suggest that Covid-19 isn’t quite as dangerous as was initially feared, this still seems to have been a sensible response given what we knew at the time. What is less clear, is how insisting that people not drink during this period flattens anything other than your mood.

I find the argument that the alcohol ban has miraculously delivered us fewer deaths and quieter hospitals, and is therefore justified, a little baffling. The lockdown has dropped levels of everything – my guess is we have far fewer road deaths too, and probably street muggings, but no one is suggesting that we stay in indefinite lockdown to maintain that. It would be silly.

If we discovered that North Korea had lower crime rates, I don’t think that many of us would be suggesting that we copy their version of statesmanship either. And if banning alcohol sales was such a silver bullet, why isn’t the rest of the world copying our genius? Maybe, just maybe, it’s not so smart after all.