The ban on the consumption of any alcoholic beverage under 18 should proceed until the summer, estimates the Deputy Director of Intervention Services in behaviors Additives and the Dependencies (SICAD), Manuel Cardoso, the Ministry of Health confirms that there will be changes in the content. The current legislation distinguishes between spirits, forbidding them to persons under 18 years of distillates such as beer and wine, which are prohibited only to those who are under 16. The legislative framework was given as “ineffective”.
For many years that the proposal to ban the sale and consumption of alcohol to minors contained in official documents of the bodies with the protection of this area, for example, the National Plan for Reducing Problems Linked to Alcohol 2010-2012 .
But when the current government decided to move the law, which is 2013, chose to create a distinction between two types of alcohol, increasing the legal drinking age to 18 only for spirit drinks (as are vodka or whiskey) and leaving unchanged the legal age of 16 years in the use for non spirits, which include, for example, beer and wine.
At the time, the change was widely criticized by experts, by saying that he intended to protect the wine sector and beers. And that created the idea that there were good and bad alcohol alcohol. Manuel Cardoso argues that the end of this distinction aims to break this problem: “We can not send the wrong message, that there is a better alcohol than others.”
The Ministry of Health is now replied that “there will be a change in legislation governing the sale of alcohol to minors, bringing it closer to that of the majority of Europe legislation, seeking to prevent access of all alcoholic beverages to persons under 18 years, “but does not advance with dates.
Manuel Cardoso says there is a consensus about the rise of legal age and that this will be one of the topics for discussion at the annual meeting of the National Alcohol and Health Forum, a body that brings together various players in the field and taking place this Tuesday in Loures . One of the meeting of the panels is precisely on the proposed amendments to the current legislation.
Deputy State officer of Health, Francisco Leal da Costa was asked to SICAD a study to take stock of this table legislative. The findings, presented in February, could not be more obvious: alcohol consumption among young people under 18 has not decreased and the frequency of problems associated with the situations of alcoholic coma or unprotected sex remained. Control was not enforced in bars, clubs or other consumer sites and the public sale of beverages to ensure that they meet the law. In brief. The new legislation of 2013, which intended to reduce the consumption of alcohol and to restrict their access to the newest, to enhance health gains, was given as “ineffective”
The SICAD advanced in January with concrete proposals for amendments to legislation sent to the Ministry of Health. First, a ban, pure and simple, the sale of alcohol to minors, regardless of the type of beverage. Manuel Cardoso believes that this measure, which has yet to be approved by the Council of Ministers, should move to the summer. The Health Minister Paulo Macedo, has publicly admitted that the ban is on the table.
The SICAD also proposed to the ministry that parents of children who are found to consume alcohol start to be notified in person. Manuel Cardoso claims that this was one of the areas where the current law brought “a step backwards”. Currently parents are not notified, by letter, if your child is found in a drunken state, the ordinance uses the phrase “when depict alcohol intoxication”. “In 2002 [the previous legislation] the notification by letter but was always happened that the lowest was caught consuming. There was a setback. “
As for earnings, Manuel Cardoso considers as positive the drink sales ban in service stations.
As for surveillance” will always be very complicated, it is the big problem, also in other countries, “he says. Manuel Cardoso Note that, for example, in United States radical is – if a smaller consuming is identified in this category is terminated. The idea is not to follow the example of this country but says the current legislation “when it can not identify the adult who provided the drink [may be another young man who already has 18 years], the supervision is bound hand and foot.” The SICAD then proposed to the Ministry of Health that whenever a minor is caught consuming alcohol within an establishment the owner is always sanctioned. “Even if you can not identify who gave the drink to the minor, the establishment should always be held responsible.”
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