In September 2020, Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) announced that it would no longer be renewing liquor licences to sundry shops, convenience stores and Chinese medicine shops.

Then, on 30 September 2021, DBKL announced that the ban on liquor sales by grocery and convenience shops as well as Chinese medicine halls in the capital city had been postponed for a month till Oct 31.

The proposal was hardly an ‘alcohol ban’ as pubs, restaurants and bars would still be allowed to serve alcohol. As gentle as this change was meant to be, it was still welcomed by the majority of citizens, including the Federal Territory Information Chief of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), Dr Pala Kumaran, citing the harm alcohol consumption brings to the community.

The only objections came, not unexpectedly, from the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall and, on social media, from the upper-middle class urbanites, citing the loss of ‘metropolitan multicultural spirit of harmony’ and, of course, monetary losses. Underlying these were accusations of ‘tyranny of the majority’ or ‘religious fundamentalism chipping away at personal freedoms’.

There is a lot to unpack here

Firstly, it is globally acknowledged that any presumed benefit connected to the production, sale and use of alcohol comes at an enormous cost to society. Alcohol is not an ordinary commodity. It causes medical, psychological and social harm by the mechanisms of physical toxicity, intoxication and dependence.

Secondly, considering that the alcohol industry or Big Booze is following the footsteps of its evil cousin Big Tobacco by concentrating on Asian and African markets as their business dwindles in Western countries, it would be prudent to pre-emptively create a national alcohol policy which recognises these harmful features, and a comprehensive system to regulate its use.

There are seven potential areas for intervention to reduce the harm caused by alcohol:

1. Alcohol taxes and price controls.

2. Regulation of the physical availability through restrictions on time, place and density of alcohol outlets (which is the target of DBKL’s proposed regulation).

3. Regulation of advertising and marketing.

4. Altering the drinking context.

5. Drink-driving countermeasures.

6. Intervention and screening in health care settings.

7. Education and persuasion.

In terms of health and safety, the evidence of the harm of alcohol has never been clearer. In 2016, the most comprehensive study of the global burden of alcohol use by The Global Burden of Disease 2016 Alcohol Collaborators was published in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal. It clearly demonstrated the substantial, and larger than previously estimated contribution of alcohol to death, disability, and ill health, globally. The results were so compelling that it prompted the Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom to state that there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption”.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has classified alcohol as a Class 1 carcinogen, along with asbestos and tobacco.

Consuming alcohol increases the risk of developing cancer of the bowel, mouth, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver and breast.

In the same year, the Lancet study was published, the United States CDC also released a warning that an estimated 3.3 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 years in the United States are at risk of exposing their developing baby to alcohol because they are drinking, sexually active, and not using birth control to prevent pregnancy. Alcohol use during pregnancy, even within the first few weeks and before a woman knows she is pregnant, can cause physical, behavioural, and intellectual disabilities that can last for a child’s lifetime. These disabilities are known as foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). There is no known safe amount of alcohol – even beer or wine – that is safe for a woman to drink at any stage of pregnancy.

Capitalistic manipulations

One aspect of the alcohol trade which many do not realise is the capitalistic manipulations by Big Booze. The diseases and harm mentioned above arise from unhealthy behaviours which are facilitated by unhealthy environments and fuelled by commercial interests, putting shareholder value ahead of the tragic human consequences.

Professor David Jernigan, a world expert on alcohol policy and the author of Thirsting for Markets: The Global Impact of Corporate Alcohol states that: “The world’s largest alcohol companies are aggressively promoting their product to the poor, the young and the addicted and encouraging them to drink more. What we have is a small club of companies that have divided up the world to minimise competition and maximise profits.”

Stagnant sales in the West have caused the industry to market aggressively in Asia and Africa where Jernigan shows how alcohol companies use advertising methods which could not be allowed in Britain. In his analysis of the situation in Malaysia, he says of rural low-income Indian workers who are the prime consumers of samsu and toddy:

“To this day, the alcohol economy on the agricultural estates guarantees a stable workforce.”

He quotes Arokiasamy in a 1995 paper, “It is common for these estate labourers to buy hard liquor at the beginning of the month when they receive their salary; to shift to the less expensive beer toward the middle of the month, when they have less money; and to end the month with cheap toddy or samsu. Many of the drinkers on these estates spend their entire income on alcohol. It is also common for them to take advances on their salary to buy liquor, resulting in virtual debt bondage.”

In other more developed countries, the chicanery continues. In Australia for instance, the alcohol industry has been fighting for many decades to preserve profits over public safety, disregarding consumers’ rights to know the contents of their products, and the harm associated.

They fought against the 0.05 drink driving limit in the 1950s, and successfully stopped Australian governments from telling consumers about the cancer risk associated with alcohol consumption. For example, while policymakers proposed warning labels with information about cancer risk be placed on alcoholic drinks, this has yet to be implemented. The industry is also resisting a push to explicitly warn consumers drinking is harmful to unborn babies by means of mandatory labelling on all alcohol containers, suggesting it’s “too much information”.

These examples show how the industry continues to actively muddy efforts to educate the public of the harms of alcohol consumption. Let’s be frank here, the truth is if alcohol consumers all drank responsibly, the industry would be significantly less profitable. They therefore have great interest in seeing any restrictions on time, place and density of alcohol outlets abolished completely. Let’s not be fooled by them.

Alcohol menace should not be viewed as a ‘Muslim issue’

When discussing this problem, what truly matters is evidence and objectivity. Muslims of Malaysia are obviously not the only ones in the world who recognise the harm of alcohol and who try to curtail its use. This is a global problem evidenced by numerous worldwide efforts, such as the Minimal Unit Pricing (MUP) currently underway in Scotland, the 2005 protests by Buddhist monks in Thailand over the proposed public listing of Thai Beverages Ltd in the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), Australia’s National Alcohol Strategy 2019-2028 and many more.

Families destroyed by alcohol dependence, breadwinners killed by drunk drivers, the burden on our health services, can these costs and their far-reaching consequences be quantified reliably? What level of tolerance will we have before we say enough is enough?

To that end, we strongly urge DBKL to continue with the proposal to limit liquor licences as originally planned and to extend them further if possible. We urge DBKL not to pay any heed to the capitalistic interests of a few, and to prioritise the safety, harmony and wellness of the many who stand to benefit from this intervention.

-- BERNAMA

Assoc Prof Dr Rafidah Hanim Mokhtar is a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM).