Medical panel seeks uniform drinking age

Just like there is a legal age for marriage, the Indian Medical Association IMA has asked the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to draft a policy for imposing uniform age bar for liquor consumption across the state.

The demand was made through a letter which was sent to the chief minister’s office last week.

Dr Sagar Mundada, president of IMA said that the Maharashtra is the only state where there is no specific age prescribed for consuming liquor. He said, “The law made by the government for consuming liquor is medically baseless.

According to the state’s existing law, one can consume wine at the age of 18, beer at 21 and hard liquor at 25, which encourages the youth to have more toxic alcoholic beverage at an early age.”

Terming the existing laws is useless, Mundada said that there is no check on what youngsters consumed after entering a bar. “Once a youngster enters the bar, he/she can drink any liquor even if he/she is entitled to drink only wine as per the law. There must be check on what youngster consume,” added Mundada.

As per the statistics by the excise Department, despite low volumes, tribal-dominated Nandurbar has the highest rise in wine consumption (69.58 per cent), while Bhandara in Vidarbha has seen rise in sales of beer and Country liquor (CL) by 14.33 per cent and 27.61per cent, respectively the highest in the state. Yavatmal accounted for a massive 43.56per cent increase in Indian Made foreign Liquor sales.