Lankans guzzle 75.2 mn litres of arrack, 67 mn litres of beer
By Ravi Ladduwahetty
The consumption of alcohol has drastically increased in Sri Lanka over the five year period of 2006-2010.
A report titled, A Handbook of Drug Abuse Information – 2011, issued by the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board, which is under the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development of which the President is the Minister and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Secretary, reveals in a tabulated chart that arrack consumption has increased from 67.1 million litres in 2006 to 75.2 million litres in 2010, bottled toddy from 10.5 million litres in 2006 to 16 million litres in 2010, Malt Liquor (which is beer, stout and porter) from 51.9 million litres in 2006 to 66.9 million litres in 2010 and sparkling wines from 375,739 litres in 2006 to 395, 892 litres in 2010.
The report says that whisky consumption has increased from 240,008 litres to 542,776 litres, brandy from 1.98 mn litres to 2.5 mn litres, gin from 1.2 mn litres to 1.9 mn litres, rum from 543,572 million lires to 804,008 million litres and vodka from 111,551 million litres in 2006 to 236,609 million litres in 2010.
The Colombo District has topped the list with 11.3 million litres of arrack, 113,000 litres of whisky, 576,560 litres of brandy, and 10.1 million litres of malt liquor, 22,896 litres of bottled toddy. The Gampaha District is the second highest with 7.9 million litres of arrack, 98,548 litres of whisky, 395,012 litres of brandy, and 9.2 million litres of malt liquor, 406,768 litres of bottled toddy.
Of the Northern Districts, Jaffna leads with 1.6 million litres of arrack, 2,700 litres of whisky, 25,151 litres of brandy, and 2.4 million litres of malt liquor while there has been no sale of bottled toddy.
Of the consumption of cigarettes for the year 2010, a total of 2.8 billion sticks of John Player Gold leaf cigarettes have been issued to the market in the 20 per pack form, while the 12 per pack form has accounted for 296 million sticks for the year! Benson and Hedges, has accounted for 13.9 million sticks while Dunhill Parent has accounted for 10.6 mn sticks, Dunhill Lights 14.8 mn sticks, Capstan 450 million sticks and three roses’ 118 million sticks, all for 2010.
However, Inland Revenue Department’s Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) Ariyadasa Boderagama toldThe Island yesterday that the phenomenal increase in the alcohol and cigarette consumption had been due to the increased tourist arrivals and the opening up of the Northern and Eastern Provinces to legal alcohol which was prohibited during the times of the war.
According to Bodaragama, one of the reasons for the sharp increase in the alcohol consumption was that tourists loved to drink arrack as it was not available anywhere else in the world.
He said that there was a shift in consumption patterns in the north from the days of the LTTE rule where the Tigers had large moonshine factories under their administration and they did not allow the northern citizens to drink moonshine. "Now the people of the North are increasingly drinking the legal alcohol instead of moonshine for which no taxes are paid," he said.
As for the rest of the seven provinces, Bodaragama said that there were fluctuations though the increases or the decreases were marginal. His department was having many programmes which were preventive measures, though the department was netting the taxes which was a whopping Rs. 42.1 billion in 2010.
National Dangerous Drugs Control Board Director General Karunadasa Gamage also said that the department’s mandate was to have preventive measures and treat the addicts, though it did not take responsibility for the offenders.
The story of the statistics was still the same and all we could do was to take preventive measures through counselling through school children and youth leaders, he said.
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