00:00we believe that it's important to have had a framework first from which the
00:05legislation should come I want to be very clear so that is normally the way
00:10that the WHO and others have spoken about developing policy in the space they
00:16are in fact precedents and there is a process that's been approved and we were
00:20very looking forward to that process I want to go back to my beginning point we
00:25completely support the objective the process is what we're looking at and we
00:30don't believe that because the legislation has now been announced that
00:35it means that we still can't have a process the Trinidad and Tobago beverage
00:40alcohol alliance is calling for the establishment of a comprehensive
00:44national alcohol policy as the government moves to increase the age of the sale
00:49purchase possession and consumption for alcohol tobacco and cannabis via the
00:55miscellaneous provisions bill 2026 so what I think we now need to do it's it's
01:01not too late is to get the University of the West Indies to get other
01:05stakeholders and we do have commercial enterprises that do have their own ways
01:11of collecting information many of them have relationships to global
01:16multinational partners that themselves monitor very closely consumption and
01:22behavior patterns in any organization aim that bringing more information on to
01:27the table more research to the table so that this are this very important and
01:33legislation and can achieve the objectives which it's so correctly after
01:38absolutely correctly establishes that something that's important for society
01:43whether that's 20 whether it's 19 whether it's 21 whatever we land on these
01:49standards we're going to be very supportive of that the alliance is also urging the
01:55government to convene a joint select committee on the matter we believe that
01:59because of its significance and its far-reaching implications and its
02:03importance to our society that we allow a joint select committee process to sort of
02:12look at all the issues with all the stakeholders with the experts and with the
02:18policymakers to get the best evidence to calibrate precisely where the government lands on this
02:26one what I do mean is things like the age thresholds what I do mean the penalties what I do
02:33mean the
02:35enforcement capacity and infrastructure and the societal buying that I think would be very important to put in the
02:42this arrangement in place that we as I said from the beginning support
02:48Dr. Antwine says there is also some concern about the move intensifying illicit activity
02:55we support strong well enforced legal purchase age laws we therefore stand ready to implement
03:03mandatory ID verifications at the point of sale we've had we've had discussions on this for some time
03:11we we we support retailer training and certification across the license trade and we launched very deliberate
03:21programs during COVID in this regard and we also support whatever age parliament ultimately determines is the
03:30appropriate age for the Trinidad and Tobago population the TTBA says it remains open to consultation on the matter
03:40for NASA cutting TV6 news
03:43you
03:45you
03:46you
