NT Top Cop Michael Murphy says he’s asked for ‘measures to be put in place’ for hand sanitiser
The Territory’s top cop says ‘we’ve got to do everything we can’ to ‘minimise harm’, amid a trend of hand sanitiser cosumption, while another cop says ‘it’s not just hand sanitiser’ being abused. Read the latest.
Northern Territory
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Industry has been asked for “measures to be put in place” around an everyday product, the Territory’s Top Cop says, but his southern counterpart says it’s “not just hand sanitiser, it’s other products” that are being abused for an alcohol fix.
On Tuesday, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said he’d asked Neighbourhood Watch NT to engage with the NT Chamber of Commerce “to put measures in place” around hand sanitiser in the Territory.
Mr Murphy said he asked for the “same measures” which businesses put around deodorants and glues “to minimise harm”.
Currently, some businesses in the Territory have solvents, deodorants – and in some cases vanilla essence – under lock and key in their stores.
“It’s about receiving the information from the public and actually actioning it and doing something about it, and then also reaching out to government department, like hospitals, to make sure that they have a level of security around sanitiser as well, so we can limit its use or abuse,” Mr Murphy said.
Northern Territory Chamber of Commerce chief operating officer Nicole Walsh said the chamber was due to meet with Neighbourhood Watch on the issue in the coming days.
“Now we need to go back to the business community and talk to them and then come up with some ideas and thoughts and some suggestions on how that can be best managed in terms,” Ms Walsh said.
“It’s tough doing business these days and you know, we certainly don’t want to impose extra things, but we absolutely understand that again, the use or misuse of hand sanitiser is a really harmful product.”
Mr Murphy first flagged potential regulations around the everyday product during a visit to Alice Springs.
He said he’d received information hand sanitiser was being mixed with zero-alcohol beer and then consumed.
Elaborating further on Tuesday, he said he’d since heard people desperate for an alcoholic drink were mixing “orange juice and vegemite to make homebrew”.
“That’s the level people will go to and that’s really concerning,” he said.
“If people want to get a hit, they’ll get a hit.”
In the past, some pharmacies in Alice Springs stopped selling hand sanitiser all together in a bid to stop the product from being misused.
Northern Territory Police Southern Commander James Gray-Spence said “it’s not jut hand sanitiser, it’s other products”.
“We know down here in Southern Command that people do abuse non beverage alcohol and other alcohol analogues,” he said.
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Originally published as NT Top Cop Michael Murphy says he’s asked for ‘measures to be put in place’ for hand sanitiser
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