Lowering the permissible alcohol level for drivers is common enough. Banning booze on the roads altogether is plainly far more drastic. But road deaths in Brazil, for instance, have dropped by almost a third in the three years since the government told drivers to eschew even a drop. The South African government, in a bid to cut the country's tippling, proposes to follow suit. It wants to ban all alcohol advertising. Some ministries have stopped serving booze at functions. What about banning roadside pedestrians from drinking too? Even that may be under consideration, though it is unclear how walkers weaving home from a legal drinking bout would be taken to task. In alcohol-consumption league tables, South Africa is middle-of-the-road; between half and two-thirds of its citizens never drink. But if teetotallers are excluded, South Africans may be the fifth-heaviest tipplers in the world, with each adult drinker downing on average 35 litres of pure alcohol a year, twice as much as in France or the United States, says the World Health Organisation.
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