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Faced with restrictions on buying cheap casks of wine, Aborigines at Alice Springs in central Australia have resorted to drinking mouthwash in order to get drunk.
Since wine sales were restricted six months ago, pharmacists have noticed a six-fold increase in sales of mouthwash, which has an alcohol content of up to 26 per cent. Where council workers once found piles of beer cans and empty wine bladders at drinking spots around the desert town, they are now finding empty Listerine mouthwash bottles. Alice Springs Town Council spokesman Craig Pankhurst told ABC radio. "We've had major increases [in Listerine use] right through the CBD."
One pharmacist has taken mouthwash off the shelves after noticing a 500 per cent increase in sales in the past few weeks. But most supermarkets in the town are still stocking the product. The Northern Territory Health Minister, Chris Burns, has asked retailers to be more vigilant about how many bottles of mouthwash they sell at any one time and to whom.
Since October retailers in Alice Springs have been able to sell cask wine only between 6pm and 9pm. There has also been a crackdown on petrol sniffing. A new type of non-sniffable petrol, Opal, has helped tackle the scourge in central Australia.
