A small longread about theft and restrictions, brace yourselves.

Today at work I had to dive into various regional restrictions on alcohol sales.
Besides the well-known restrictions on alcohol sales hours (a good restriction, if it's not three hours a day) or restrictions on sales in apartment buildings (there are many details, but we also approve), there are also strange and even outright harmful ones for everyone:

And here is one of them:
When carrying out retail sales of alcoholic products, except for retail sales of alcoholic products when providing public catering services, display and demonstration of alcoholic products are not allowed:
1) in the checkout area (within a radius of 2 meters from the location of the cash register equipment if the sales floor area is up to 50 square meters inclusive, within a radius of 3 meters from the location of the cash register equipment if the sales floor area is over 50 to 150 square meters inclusive, within a radius of 5 meters from the location of the cash register equipment if the sales floor area is over 150 square meters).

Why is alcohol generally placed closer to the checkouts? Because it gets stolen.
Everything gets stolen, from beer to expensive spirits.
It is stolen quite often, and sometimes even systematically to order, while there is practically no proper recourse for such cases, we cannot slap people on the wrists, and the punishment for theft is too insignificant, unlike in neighboring countries.
Mostly it doesn't even reach administrative penalties.

In such a situation, the simplest solution is to place alcohol closer to the checkouts, where there is more physical control by store employees, but, by the way, this is not a guarantee either; there are many cases in the industry where store employees were "ambushed" after work and physically assaulted for interfering with an "act of theft."

But such restrictions greatly contribute to theft, because by moving the alcohol section away from the checkouts, we only make theft easier.
Every stolen bottle is not only a loss for the store/chain, but also a lost taxable base for the state, while the problem of alcohol accessibility is not solved at all; it has now become free for some, and therefore even more accessible.

And in some companies, for shortages (including those caused by theft), salaries of store employees are deducted, which already affects the overall household income, its purchasing power, and the ability to save for important purchases (renovation, vacation, children's education, or medical treatment).

Such is the cycle of negatives and losses due to the lack of adequate punishment, but at least alcohol is not at the checkout, yes.