In your dreams

Someone called Vilja Kiisler was full of praise for City Hall's crackdown on alcohol in an article entitled The Centre Party's Wet Dreams on Delfi today:

Curing the nation's drinking problems with restrictions on alcohol sales is no longer the business of the Centre Party alone: Tartu's Reformist mayor has also come to the conclusion that selling vodka in the wee hours will have to be done away with. But back in Tallinn, the Centrists plan to turn the taps off even tighter.

City Council mouthpiece Toomas Vitsut has announced that even tougher restrictions are in the pipeline — because the ones they've put into practice thus far have failed to reduce the amount of drinking. A bit of common sense here might make them question whether the restrictions make sense in the first place if they're not even getting close to doing what they say on the tin. But no. Loyal footsoldiers cannot afford the luxury of common sense. Particularly not Vitsut, whole sole reason for being of late seems to be to play up [party leader Edgar] Savisaar's great ideas.

And now Vitsut is going even more Savisaaresque on us and promising that if one ban isn't enough, we'll impose two — and keep on imposing them until they produce results, without bothering to ask whether it actually helps anyone break their debilitating habit.

We can talk about it till the cows come home, but common sense says that no restriction is ever going to break the habit of a lifetime — it will only make people hide it even more. If you know you won't be able to get your beer or your vodka from the shop after 8 o'clock, you buy it earlier, and voila, problem solved. In fact you buy more, just so you won't have to face the inconvenience of running out. Who does Vice Mayor [Jaanus] Mutli (hooray! - Ed.) think he's fooling when he says that vodka shopping sprees are a thing of the past and that people aren't drinking as much as they used to?

http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudised/arvamus/article.php?id=16848162