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26 February, 2014

MIZORAM TO DECRIMINALIZE THE MOST HARMFUL DRUG, ALCOHOL

Source: www.thelancet.com
Hats off to the current government for taking a bold step in scrapping the irrational and unfeasible Mizoram Liquor Total Prohibition (MLTP) Act of 1995. Our 'Noble Experiment' has been characterized by widespread drug-abuse, increasing HIV prevalence, occasional spurious-liquor deaths, frequent drug-related deaths, enormous loss of excise revenue and maybe moral hypocrisy.

At the same time, if we look at the picture, David Nutt, Leslie King and Lawrence Phillips in "Drug harms in the UK: A Multi-criteria Decision Analysis" identified alcohol as the most harmful drug surpassing even heroin, crack and cocaine. Herman Levy also observed that alcohol consumption triggers an urge to commit offense which the Germans called 'deliktsantrieb'.

The message is crystal clear. For a state which is already high on criminality (ranked 12th among Indian states and UTs in 2010 as recorded by National Crime Records Bureau), we'd definitely need to focus on checking alcohol-related harms and crime (such as violence: domestic and public, road traffic accidents, molestation, rape etc. And oh! we record the highest rape crime since the 90's).

The 'harm to others' is more than the 'harm to users' in the case of alcohol. So, even if the 'harm to oneself' is a matter of choice or an individual's liberty, the rights and liberty of another needs to be protected from the drunkard. This issue is a major challenge for the 'soon-to-be wet state', if it adopts decriminalized alcohol policy.