From CK Nayak
New Delhi: At a time when the country is struggling to maintain the supply of essential commodities and life-saving kits, Meghalaya along with a few other states are debating over the availability of alcohol.
Wine dealers in the state want the government to allow opening of their outlets on alternate days as the lockdown has increased the demand for liquor and they pointed out that many people need it to deal with the stress.
BJP’s Meghalaya unit President Ernest Mawrie, who is also the secretary of the Khasi Hills Wine Dealers and Welfare Association on Friday urged Chief Minister Conrad Sangma to allow wine shops in the state to be open due to immense public pressure amid the lockdown in the state. Mawrie wrote a letter to the chief minister seeking permission as alcohol consumption is a “way of life” in the state.
This is despite the fact that the Union Health Ministry has urged people with alcohol dependency facing withdrawal symptoms during the lockdown period to visit their nearest healthcare facility for prescription of medicines.
If the symptoms are severe, including seizures and hallucinations, the patients should be rushed to hospital, the ministry advisory said.
The appeal from wine dealers followed the withdrawal of an order by the state government asking bonded warehouses to sell liquor.
The notification advising tempered sale of alcohol was issued on March 30 but the order was withdrawn following strong objection from the Indian Medical Association.
The order had read: “The Meghalaya government has approved home delivery of liquor on health grounds strictly against medical prescriptions issued by the registered medical practitioner.’’
Bonded warehouses may be allowed to sell and provide home delivery of liquor as a special case with immediate effect up to the midnight of April 14, until further orders to customers who are 21 years old and above, the government had said in its March 30 order.
Wine shops in Meghalaya have been offering alcoholic beverages at one of the cheapest rates in the Northeast. Liquor is prohibited in two of the region’s states — Mizoram and Nagaland — while extremists have banned drinking in Manipur.
The Ministry also hoped that a lockdown situation, which entails non-availability of alcohol, may be a blessing in disguise for some people who may utilise this opportunity to quit drinking altogether.
However, it is also a significant challenge for a certain proportion of people with alcohol dependency who are at risk of experiencing severe alcohol withdrawal and its consequences, it added.
This is not for the first time Meghalaya debated sale of alcohol in the tribal dominated by state. The state was exempted from sale of liquor when Supreme Court banned wine shops near the highways to prevent fatal road accidents.
Another state Kerala had also decided to issue special passes for tipplers to buy liquor but on doctor’s prescription that they are showing withdrawal symptoms due to non-availability of alcohol in view of the lockdown.
But the medical fraternity was up in arms on Tuesday against the government order there too.
There are also cases outside the North East where several people committed suicide due to non-availability of alcohol.
Some cases of deaths have also been reported outside the state where raw spirit were used as substitute for liquor.
According to the 2019 ‘Magnitude of Substance Abuse in India’ report by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, there are 16 crore users of alcohol in the country. Of those, 5.7 crore were considered “problem users” and 2.9 crore “dependent users’’ with Kerala having maximum consumers.