Tax-paid waste: Letters, 12 January

The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.

Increase tax and cut back hours for swilling

I share Mike Williams' concern (Letters, Jan 5) about the $780 million tax-paid waste on drunken attendances to accident and emergency departments around the country but I fear for his solution - billing those who have overdosed with the costs of patching them up.

In the current commercialised alcohol environment, this would lead to an increase in alcohol related harm, as that girl who got raped while drinking would be afraid to present for help and that young man lying unconscious after his mates encouraged him to have 21 shots for his birthday would be less likely to have the ambulance called as his respiratory centre fails.

Mr Williams should be reassured that there is an evidence-based way to reduce the hospitals being swamped with drunks - increase excise tax and reduce available hours for drinking. Those that cry "nanny state" in response to increasing the price of alcohol should look at the bill they are already paying - billions per year, plus the six-hour wait at accident and emergency.

If only our politicians had enough intestines to stand up to the alcohol industry with a solution that endorses the adage that prevention is better than cure.

(Abridged)

TONY FARRELL, Mount Maunganui

Rena's true toll

I cannot believe reading in a recent article a local woman, Clodagh Kendal, saying: "We certainly don't want any [containers] on the rocks at Orokawa Bay, it is just a pristine beautiful place."

What a thoughtless thing to say. None of our beaches deserve containers or pollution on our beaches, killing our wildlife and affecting marine life. The comments didn't stop there. Mrs Kendal then said she felt for holidaymakers who had scarcely seen the sun and then woke yesterday to find the beach closed.

"It's not fair, the holidaymakers who are paying money to rent places. They've had a shocking summer," she said. So what? What about families within this area that depend on the kai moana to survive? Holidays are simply a leisure activity, whereas the stranding of Rena is New Zealand's largest maritime disaster, which has happened in our area.

I think we need to be realistic and look past thinking about how unfair a holiday some people have had. Instead think about the real impact this disaster has had and that we will be seeing the damage and impact for a long time yet on our moana and environment and economy.

G McISAAC, Ohauiti