Each Thai consumes 6-7 litres per year

Thais spend about Bt200 billion on alcohol each year, while damages caused by alcohol costs Thailand nearly Bt350 billion every year, NGOs revealed yesterday, adding that alcohol consumption per head here surpassed many Asian countries and young drinkers were on the rise.

At a meeting yesterday hosted by the Parliament's standing committee on Political and Mass Communication Development, representatives from antialcohol NGOs and Metropolitan Police were invited to provide information about youths' drinking habits and booze being sold near schools.

Director of the AntiAlcohol Organisations' Network, Songkran Pakchokdee, said that though the government believed that collecting a lot of taxes from alcohol would boost the economy, Thai society only spent Bt200 billion on alcohol while the damages cost the government Bt350 billion every year. He went on say that the World Bank had warned that if a country could not control alcohol consumption among its citizens, its economy would not grow. He quoted the Excise Department as saying that for every Bt1 collected on alcohol tax, Bt2 was spent on damages.

Director for the Centre for Alcohol Studies, Thaksaphon Thamarangsi, said Thais approximately drank 6 to 7 litres of alcohol per year, which is higher than the amount consumed in Japan and South Korea.

A secondyear student at Ratchaphruek College, Jiraporn Kamolrangsan, said the cocktail shops mushrooming everywhere were leading Thai youth astray. She said Deputy Prime Minister MajGeneral Sanan Kajornprasart, who chairs the National Committee on Alcohol Policy, had told her and fellow students in September that he would implement tougher antialcohol measures in October. However, nothing has been done so far because Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had asked for the issue to be put on halt, even though he claims on his website that he wants to solve this problem as soon as possible, she said. She also wondered if the authorities' lack of sincerity in tackling the problem could be blamed on overlapping benefits.

Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner Pongsan Jiamon admitted that many cocktail stands and shops selling booze were found near schools and most of them had no operating licences. Each month police raided about 400 such shops, but could do little because the fines for selling without permission are light - Bt2,000 for foreign and Bt500 for local brands - and the police had no authority to close these venues, he said.

Kraisak Choonhavan, who chairs the standing committee, said he would have his panel draft a letter calling on all other Parliament standing committees to sign a request for Sanan and Abhisit to look into the problem.