“Alcohol Delivered to Her Doorstep While Drunk: Sister Fights for GamStop-Style Ban After Zoe Hughes Died at 35”
Zoe Hughes was only 35 years old when she was found dead in her home in Lincoln. She had been struggling with alcoholism for many years. Despite going through rehab twice and making repeated efforts to overcome her addiction, she was trying to survive in a modern world where alcohol could be ordered and delivered straight to her front door with nothing more than a quick tap on a smartphone screen.After her tragic death, her sister Alexandria began carefully reviewing Zoe’s financial accounts and records. What she discovered was both shocking and deeply heartbreaking.
Zoe had been spending up to £1,500 every month on alcohol ordered through various delivery apps. She wasn’t physically going to shops or pubs, where a bartender or shop assistant might have noticed her condition and refused to serve her. Instead, she was ordering from the isolation of her own home, alone, with the alcohol conveniently delivered right to her doorstep.Just Eat’s official terms of service clearly state that delivery drivers must not hand over alcohol to anyone who appears visibly intoxicated. However, according to Alexandria, in Zoe’s case the alcohol was often simply left on the doorstep without any proper checks. No one was assessing her condition. No one was making a responsible judgment call.
The safety policy existed only on paper, but in practice, it was rarely enforced.Devastated by the loss of her sister, Alexandria Hughes has now launched a petition calling for the creation of a national self-exclusion scheme for alcohol delivery services. She proposes a system similar to GamStop, which allows people struggling with gambling addiction to block themselves from all betting platforms at once. Under her proposal, vulnerable individuals and their families would be able to request long-term blocks on alcohol deliveries across all major delivery platforms simultaneously.The petition has already gathered more than 15,000 signatures.Alexandria’s argument is straightforward and powerful: if someone walks into a pub visibly drunk, they will be refused service. If a person enters a shop while intoxicated, staff have both the right and the obligation to refuse the sale.
Yet when someone is ordering from home, hidden behind a phone screen, there is no such safeguard or checkpoint in place. Alcohol can be ordered in large quantities, delivered repeatedly, day after day, and no one is there to monitor the situation or intervene.This is not an isolated tragedy. In Australia, a 30-year-old woman named Kathleen Arnold was found dead in Melbourne in September 2023 with a dangerously high blood alcohol level of 0.54. In the six months before her death, she had placed alcohol orders through delivery platforms an astonishing 319 times. A coroner’s investigation into her death resulted in formal recommendations for significant reform in the industry.The delivery app industry has built enormous profits on the promise of maximum convenience. For people battling severe addiction, however, that same convenience can become extremely dangerous — sometimes becoming the difference between survival and death. Alexandria Hughes lost her sister because of it. She is now fighting passionately to ensure that the delivery industry is held to the same basic standards of responsibility and duty of care that every pub landlord and corner shop owner is already legally expected to meet.
