Some interesting facts about alcohol consumption
Alcohol consumption creates poverty
Information presented to us indicates that our poor and our rural communities are more seriously affected. Alcohol consumption exacerbates poverty.
In Sri Lanka and Malaysia alcohol consumption is higher among poor families. In the rural areas in both countries, those who drink do so heavily, mainly locally produced alcohol. Poor households tend to spend a greater percentage of their income on alcohol.
A study on the urban poor in Sri Lanka showed families that consumed alcohol spend more than 30 per cent of their total expenditure on alcohol. Another survey conducted in six Sri Lankan districts found that between 30 and 50 per cent of the income of low-income families was spent on alcohol and tobacco.
Another 1997 survey found that the total expenditure on tobacco and alcohol exceeded the amount of government assistance given to the community under the government's poverty alleviation programmed.
In India household expenditure on alcohol varies between 3–45 per cent of their income. Alcohol misuse is one of the main killers of young men in India today. But its real impact is on the social and family dynamics that underlie its communities. Domestic violence and an exacerbation of poverty have made alcohol misuse the single most important problem for women in India.
In Thailand, household expenditure on alcohol has increased from 1.2 to 2.5 per cent. Though the figure is small at the moment, it is on an upward trend.
In Malaysia, the biggest victims of alcohol are the poor, particularly the rural Indian laborers who work in rubber and oil palm estates. Here alcohol is a major factor in exacerbating poverty. They drink samsu, (a locally distilled potent spirit) and toddy. Of the 200,000 drinkers, 75 per cent are samsu drinkers.
A regular drinker can down six bottles a day, which works out to RM9.00 or about three-quarters of his daily pay. In a month he can spend about RM300 on samsu which is about how much he earns.
The samsu menace ruins families and contributes to the breakdown of the basic social fabric of society. Often it is the women who bear the brunt of this problem – wife battery, discord in the home, abused and deprived children, non-working or chronically ill husbands who become a burden to both the family and society.
Besides loss in family income, the burden on the family is worsened when the drinker falls ill, cannot work and needs medical treatment. This pattern of locally brewed alcohol gripping the lives of poor people is evident in other developing countries around Asia.