The call by the ANCYL to ban alcohol advertising is as spot on as their call to regulate the hours and days on which liquor should be sold.

The call by the ANCYL to ban alcohol advertising is as spot on as their call to regulate the hours and days on which liquor should be sold.

The Gauteng social development department sees the call as an opportunity to help reduce alcohol abuse. In most cases these adverts promote liquor as a substance of class and sophistication that communities and hard working people cannot do without. This propaganda by breweries should be condemned with the highest contempt.

Billboards advertising alcohol are flooding townships and gateways to informal settlements. In Soweto, you see more liquor adverts than in all of Sandton and Rosebank put together. In fact, travelling from Orlando to Diepkloof on the Soweto highway, five of the six billboards advertise alcohol. At Dobsonville on the Roodepoort road near the police station, two of the three billboards advertise alcohol.

People living in these poor and working class areas are encouraged to drown their sorrows in alcohol. The advertising appears to be a strategy to increase liquor outlets and drinking in the townships.

TV adverts also promote drinking as a sign of success. Banning alcohol adverts will go a long way to help us.

Fred Mokoko, spokesman: social development department, Gauteng