Researchers say a Govt crackdown on delivery services selling alcohol, cigarettes or vape products was needed. Photo / File
Researchers say a Govt crackdown on delivery services selling alcohol, cigarettes or vape products was needed. Photo / File
Doctors are calling for urgent Government regulation on alcohol, cigarettes and vape products sold through online delivery services like Uber Eats.
Their plea comes as University of Otago research found a significant rise in demand for these services accelerated by Covid-19 lockdowns.
Though, Uber Eats says it does not sell cigarettes and vape products, and had measures in place to ensure the process for delivering alcohol via the app complied with applicable New Zealand laws and took into account responsible drinking.
However, researchers said there were alarming inconsistencies between delivery companies' polices.
Published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, the study found there were currently 130 delivery services across the country- some owned by the same company - that offered online, on-demand home deliveries of unhealthy food, alcohol, cigarettes and vape products.
"The surge of growth in online food, alcohol, nicotine and vape deliveries has been significant, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic," co-author Dr Hannah Miles said.
She said demand was expected to continue with an almost 6 per cent predicted annual revenue growth rate in New Zealand over the next three years.
Co-author Dr Brylie Apeldoorn said their worry was that without appropriate oversight, home deliveries had the potential to increase nutritional, alcohol and nicotine-related harms and counteract Government actions to reduce them, including the SmokeFree 2025 goal.
Both Apeldoorn and Miles were junior doctors at Christchurch Hospital and said every day they were seeing the harmful consequences of nicotine and alcohol.
"There have been international studies showing on-demand delivery increased rates of under-age people obtaining access to alcohol without getting an ID check," Miles said.
Data was collected from the businesses' web pages and phone apps, examined their locations, product availability, times of availability, delivery costs, promotion strategies and the handling of legal issues relating to the purchase of age-restricted items.
The study found of the 130 services, 76 per cent supplied food; 37 per cent alcohol; 23 per cent vaping products and 21 per cent cigarettes.
While all companies had a stated age verification process, only 87 per cent had birth-date entry, and only 73 per cent had an 18+ age pop-up on entering their websites.
Researchers were also concerned that only 60 per cent appeared to have product number limits.
The current Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 specifies that for remote sales, alcohol delivery must not occur between 11pm and 6am, the liquor licence must be displayed on the vendor's website and they must take reasonable steps for age verification.
While all services complied with delivery hours, researchers found some services relied on the primary vendors to hold a liquor licence rather than holding their own.
Researchers found 130 NZ companies offering home deliveries of food, alcohol, cigarettes and vape products - all experiencing a huge rise in popularity and demand. Photo / File
In other instances, the liquor licence was only issued for the area where the company is registered, not where it is delivering from, which researchers said potentially raised problems in regions which currently operate under liquor licensing trusts.
"This raises concern around legal liability for the delivery of restricted items to underage or intoxicated people, and is suggestive of a greater rate of unlawful deliveries among third-party deliverers where the courier company holds no legal liability," Apeldoorn said.
He said as expected the 10 largest cities had the most services on offer, but they also found many available in smaller towns like Tokoroa and Levin, suggesting rurality was not necessarily a protective factor for avoiding unhealthy commodities.
"This raises concerns over inequity of access to health services from the downstream poor health effects of these products, especially on-demand alcohol deliveries."
An Uber Eats spokeswoman said their measures included 18+ age verification and if the delivery person observes that the customer is intoxicated, they're prompted by the Uber Driver App to return the alcohol to the store.
They also had ID scanning technology which meant the delivery person scanned customer's evidence of age document using the app to verify their age before each delivery.
The Ministry of Health has been contacted for comment and the Herald was awaiting a response.
