Kerala accounts for the country’s highest consumption of alcohol followed by Maharashtra and Punjab.This and more on the status of alcohol in the country will become public on Tuesday as Minister of Health and Family Welfare A Ramadoss releases the first ever “atlas on alcohol” prepared by the Indian Alcohol Policy Alliances (IAPA), a national organisation affiliated to Global Alcohol Policy Alliances (GAPA) and supported by FORUT, Norway.Work on the atlas has been on for the last three years by IAPA along with NIMHANS Bangalore, World Health Organisation, members of Commonwealth Medical Association and Indian Medical Association. “Such an effort was needed as the WHO has projected that 1.8 million deaths will occur globally due to the consumption of alcohol in a few years,” said a senior IAPA official. The experts working on the atlas have found India a dominant producer of alcohol in South East Asia with 65 per cent share and have also recorded that the total cost of consequences of the alcohol use would be more than the total excise revenue.Jammu and Kashmir records the “lowest” alcohol consumption. Experts, however, attribute this fact to religious factors. Prevalence of alcohol has also been seen in the prohibited state of Gujarat. According to experts, 75 per cent alcohol consumption has been seen in Eastern India.However, there is good news as 90 per cent women in India abstain from this health hazard.The prevalence of alcohol use in men has been maximum in Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Sikkim. The number of drinkers has seen a jump from one in 300 to one in 20, meaning thereby that millions of people are addicted to alcohol. The intake of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) has seen a considerable growth in India.
