From an economic point of view, sensible, organizationally practical, a nightmare for parents: the goods in the checkout area of the retail store. These products, placed there at eye level, encourage impulse purchases. This can be a problem for alcoholics – because there are often small schnapps and liqueurs between chocolate bars and chewing gum.
Politicians from the Left and Volt factions in Hamburg-Nord are campaigning for alcohol to disappear from supermarket checkouts. With a corresponding proposal in the district assembly, they want to support alcoholics and people living voluntarily sober in their abstinence.
Resisting the temptation to grab alcoholic beverages while waiting at the checkout, which are offered cheaply and in small quantities among other alcoholic beverages, is particularly difficult for people suffering from addiction.
Due to the placement and the unavoidable standing in line at the checkout, shopping becomes a stressful situation for addicts and recovering alcoholics in which they constantly have to fight against the impulse to relapse. These triggers could be avoided with a small change in the product presentation.
Danger of normalization
Wiebke Fuchs, district representative for the Left, sees the problem in the everydayness and normalization of alcohol: “The supermarket is a place you can’t avoid,” she says. Especially in such everyday places it should be easier for those affected to avoid alcohol.
In addition to behavioral prevention, the MP also wants to strengthen relationship prevention: “We should design our environment in such a way that it doesn’t get alcoholic people into trouble.” Because the responsibility does not just lie with the individual. “Addiction is the opposite of freedom,” says Fuchs.
In addition, placing alcohol between sweets and chewing gum leads to a normalization of the intoxicant. It is suggested to children and young people that the alcohol found among the whining products posted there for children poses a comparatively little health risk, as do the other products lined up there.
The Left and Volt factions have now applied to the district assembly to raise awareness among local food retail chains about setting up alcohol-free checkouts. The background to the application is the “Alcohol-free cash registers campaign”, which has been campaigning for the implementation of the demand since 2024 with the help of petitions, lectures, letters to supermarkets and on social media.
We should design our environment so that it does not cause trouble for alcoholic people
Wiebke Fuchs, The Left Hamburg-NorD
It is important for both the initiators of the campaign and the Left and Volt factions to emphasize that this is not about a ban on alcohol, but rather about the responsible use of alcohol.
But the district assembly rejected the application by a majority on Thursday evening. Wiebke Fuchs sees the reason for this in the explosiveness of the topic. “Discussion is often easier on other topics of relationship prevention,” she says. “But the topic of addiction is very morally charged.” She still wants to pursue the initiative to remove alcohol from the checkout area.
In response to a request from the four large food companies Aldi-Nord, Lidl, Rewe and Edeka, only Rewe wanted to comment on the request. The group sees no need for action. “Alcohol as an impulse purchase item now plays no or only a very small role in the range of prepayment zones,” said Rewe. “This may vary from market to market within our cooperative structure.” There are practical reasons for the placement there: “Since the items offered there are all so small, they don’t fit into the organization system of the classic market shelves, for example.”
Only Rewe responded to the parties’ request that the companies voluntarily remove the schnapps from the shelves and offered another argument: removing the bottles from the checkout area increases the risk of pickpocketing – another problem that, according to Wiebke Fuchs, could be solved differently.
In addition, the initiators are definitely willing to compromise: it would be a step in the right direction to set up a checkout without whining goods in each supermarket that customers could use. Another option would be to store alcohol behind the cash register, in the cordoned off areas where cigarettes and tobacco products are also stored.