WHO to debate removal of duty-free discounts.

[John]

The World Health Organisation meets this week to discuss a new global alcohol policy which includes a proposal to effectively ban duty-free alcohol sales. If agreed, it will go before the WHO Assembly in May, following which governments will be encouraged, but not bound, to implement it as policy.
J.

Source: Eircom.net 18-Jan-2010.

[JohnM]

This is the same organisation that told us to panic when a dose of the sniffles was going about.

[jcskinner]

In defence of the WHO, whose communicable diseases section is led by an Irishman and which did amazing work suppressing outbreaks of Ebola in Angola as well as SARS, I think their response to the possibility of a flu pandemic was well-judged.
It's not their fault that Swine Flu isn't very fatal. Initially in Mexico it looked pretty fatal, but thankfully has turned out not to be. In fairness, governments severely over-reacted in terms of stockpiling drugs. But the WHO didn't tell them to do that.
Like most medic-dominated organisations, the WHO takes a dim view of alcohol. They see it for what it does - both to individuals as a debilitating drug and to society for the social harm and costs it causes.
You should hear some of the proposals from the Irish Medical Organisation about alcohol! And they see no difference between superstrong 'park drink' ciders and lagers and high-end spirits which clearly are going to be sipped and not slugged down.
They'd probably like to see a Scandinavian regime everywhere - state monopoly on alcohol sales, limited outlets, sky-high tarriffs, no advertising and strong penalties for breaches of law.
Generally, governments tend to ignore medics on the issue of alcohol, because they have other concerns - be it revenue raised from duty, or indigenous drinks industries, or vintner lobbies, or whatever.
I wouldn't worry too much about whatever the WHO decides on duty-free. I'd be much more worried about EU moves to scrap duty-free myself.

[Michael Foggarty]

EU have scrapped duty free. This was done years ago between member countries.

[jcskinner]

Sorry, should have been clearer.
There hasn't been duty-free between member states for many years, but there still is duty-free on flights between EU member states and non-EU member states.
There are a number of Scandinavians in both the commission and the parliament who would like to scrap all duty-free, including that on flights from Europe to elsewhere and even on flights TO Europe from elsewhere.
This latter is the more controversial, since it would effectively involve the EU telling others how to run their customs operations.
But since America successfully got away with ordering the EU to change the format of its passports, some Eurocrats think that we could similarly bully Asian, African and even American customs regimes into barring sale of duty-free to passengers boarding for Europe.
Of course, if the EU decided to scrap all duty-free on flights leaving Europe, they'd be able to implement that without any problems (except the wailing of consumers and retailers, obviously.)