Just two months after a change to national legislation made it legal to drink alcohol in most public places, Tallinn plans to clamp down again. The southern town of Elva already instituted a local ban.
“If we want to be the Nordics and protect our national health, we have to again make public drinking something that is looked down on,” said Mayor Edgar Savisaar in the city-funded paper, Pealinn. “At one point, Tallinn was the first to ban night-time sales of alcohol, which forced the national government to follow Tallinn’s way.”
In that case, back in 2008, alcohol continued to be sold past the cut-off time in neighboring municipalities. Later on, Parliament voted to make the alcohol purchasing hours 10:00-22:00 for the whole country.
Deputy Mayor Kalle Klandorf said the look of the city had degraded since the the open container law was lifted nationwide on July 1. He said 75 percent of domestic violence was due to alcohol. He raised the specter of parents and grandparents gathering on playgrounds to drink in the mornings, as he said he had witnessed in Pskov, Russia.
The Tallinn city government plans to introduce a bill to the city council, on which it has a majority, this week. (more)
Read the whole story:http://news.err.ee/v/society/603fd3e8-0c7a-47d4-9a51-619078cffc34
Source: Estonian Public Broadcasting