Blowing a booze fuse

Senior bank executives, bad-boy actors, and yuppie sons of wealthy industrialists come second only to a whopping 65 per cent of economically empowered 35-year-olds on two-wheelers at night. This cross section of society is a steadily increasing statistic of drunken drivers.
Key effects of a booming economy making themselves manifest in India currently are a seemingly unrelated twofold: A marked change in alcohol consumption patterns and an increase in the road accident rate. A January study by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences showed an alarming demographic change—of 2300 students surveyed, 15 per cent consume alcohol, with ages of initiation as low as eight.
The upswing in the economy means lifestyles are changing. The liquor industry experienced an increase of 15 per cent last year alone. Brands are surreptitiously advertised, but the effects of liquor are not. For instance, it is a wide misconception that alcohol is a stimulant, whereas in medical terms it is but a ‘primary and continuous depressant’. Its effect on the central nervous system is that of a general anaesthetic. The ‘coolness’ of drink is not balanced with an awareness of ‘how to’ be drunk or tell you how many pegs will get you to the legal limit. And the blanket ban on liquor advertising does nothing to help the cause, rather it propagates the myth.
According to the World Health Organisation, countries with booming economies see an increase in road accident rates thanks to factors such as drunken driving and increased purchasing power. Rates typically ease only when the economy becomes rich enough to put in costly measures to moderate the slaughter. According to a 2002 World Bank study, given a steady rate of economic growth, the country won’t hit the critical point at which road death rates begin to improve until 2049. The math is horrific when you consider the 80,000 fatalities the Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi, says occur annually.
There are two areas that currently fail to hem in the upsurge—the first is a concerted effort to advertise the effects of alcohol. The second of course are laws that penalise the incidence of drunken driving. While the Motor Vehicle Act stipulates a stringent 0.3 per cent of Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) as opposed to USA’s 0.8 per cent, as illegal, and upto six months in prison for an offender or a fine of Rs 2000, the price of a few offending pegs, the law fails to be implemented in spirit. Oft cited excuses range from the lack of testing equipment to a diminished nocturnal khakhi presence. With alcohol revenues forming upto 10 per cent of most state’s tax revenues, and given the growth of the industry, banning advertising and these excuses are akin to burying one’s head in the sand. Awareness, equipment, and control, on both sides of the law, are what the doctor orders.