For the past 2 days, representatives from 13 countries, and 10 NGO's have been in Belize meeting about a regional alcohol policy.
It has been an intense discussion on what to do about alcohol abuse in these different countries, so today, 7News stopped by to see how these discussions were going.
The PAHO facilitator told us today that they've discovered that the alcohol legislation is outdated in most of the participating countries.
Dr. Maristela Monteiro - Representative, PAHO
"Most countries I believe have some sort of policy, some legislation but they are outdated and they were developed probably not with the public health goal so to impact consumption problems, more just to generate revenues for the country. This is one side only of the problem - you need to balance the revenues that you can generate from consuming alcohol with the cost to pay for the damage that it causes and that's when you begin to see how the legislation is not being effective even though it's in the papers. Second problem is that in most countries, the existing legislation is not being enforced so they remain in the drawers or on paper but there is very little enforcement. Some countries have no policy at all, they have legislation but not a policy. Meaning it is a document that states what the country wants to do in relation to alcohol problems in public health."
This was the last day of a 3 day convention.
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