Kids and drinks in the same sentence?

1. The Farce That Is The Drinking Age
Limit In India
- Shashank Bhasker

2. The alcohol abuse
• With more than half of all alcohol drinkers in India falling into
the criteria for hazardous drinking, alcohol abuse is emerging
as a major public-health problem in the country.
• The country, which has seen a rapid proliferation of city bars
and nightclubs in recent years, is fast shedding its inhibitions
about alcohol as a lifestyle choice.
• Sales of alcohol have seen a growth rate of 8% in the past 3
years.
• The percentage of the drinking population aged less than 21
years has increased from 2% to more than 14% in the past 15
years

3. How effective are the rules?
• Due to this the legal age of drinking has been modified from
state to state.
• With states such as Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Gujarat
prohibiting the consumption of alcohol some states like
Maharashtra have increased the legal drinking age to 25.
• Now the question arises as to how effective have these laws
been in preventing the youth from consuming alcohol?
• Sadly the situation has not improved, in fact it has
deteriorated to a greater extent.

4. • The sale of spurious alcohol has increased drastically which
has in turn impacted the health of the alcohol consumers.
• Imposition of these stringent laws has made our police act
more unlawfully!
• It has increased the number of corrupt practices and also
resulted in greater harassment of the public.
• Seeing this slash back effect there is a dire need to implore
the loopholes in the age restriction laws.

5. Youth and their attitude
• Many alcohol adverts now feature spirited groups of young
people having a good time.
• Although alcohol advertising is banned in the electronic and
print media, surrogate advertising is rife.
• Many alcohol companies are coming out with flavored
alcohol drinks to woo the youngsters.
• Thus all this attracts youngsters to try out since they get the
image of it is cool!
• One of the main barriers for India is the lack of data and
research on its national health, social, and economic effect.

6. Money matters
• Although the Indian constitution includes the prohibition of
alcohol among its directive principles, alcohol policy is
devolved to individual states, as is the levying of taxes on it.
• Since most states derive around a fifth of their revenue from
alcohol taxation, the second largest source after sales tax.
• They are generally ambivalent towards stemming its flow.
• Most of the pubs and bars don’t even follow the rules
imposed on not selling alcohol to people below the specified
legal age.
• Even if it is down the legal system is not so stringent and
effectively implemented that they would fear flouting the
laid down regulations.

7. Need of the hour
• The need of the hour is to inculcate educational programs
sensitizing the youth as well as school going children on the
harmful effects of alcohol.
• Also there is a need of a national alcohol policy.
• This would help the health professionals to tackle alcoholism.
• The youth form the face of the nation’s future, so the
government must act prudishly to counter underage
drinking.

8. • Read the detailed report on The Farce That Is The Drinking
Age Limit In India on http://bit.ly/MQClhr