Monday, July 08, 2024

How is India in the 2020s like the USA in the 1920s? (Prohibition is causing deaths from alcohol poisoning)

The picture below is of a few paragraphs from the book The Economics of Public Issues, which I often used as a supplemental textbook when I was teaching.


Now for modern day India. See Toxic Moonshine Leaves at Least 53 Dead in India’s South: Consumption of tainted bootleg alcohol has caused several instances of mass deaths in recent years as drinkers seek out illicit liquor to save money or evade the law by Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"The death toll from tainted liquor in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has reached 53"

"The victims were sickened by drinking a bootleg alcohol with a high content of methanol."

"Consumption of tainted alcohol has caused several mass-casualty events across India in recent years. In some states that prohibit alcohol, people turn to smuggled or unregulated liquor. Elsewhere, villagers choose the bootleg product because of its lower price.

  • In 2019, at least 150 people died in two districts of the northeastern state of Assam from drinking bootleg alcohol. Weeks earlier, 100 people had died in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

  • In August 2020, at least 120 people died in Punjab from drinking toxic local alcohol, with 92 of the deaths in just one district.

  • In December 2022, at least 70 people died from drinking tainted alcohol in the eastern state of Bihar. Bihar has banned the sale and consumption of alcohol since 2016, but people consume illegal smuggled alcohol or cross the border into Nepal for cheap local alcohol."

"Local residents have said that the police were complicit, taking a cut from the bootlegger’s peddlers who brought the alcohol to the villages" [in the Kallakurichi District]

Related posts:

How is Iran in the 2020s like the USA in the 1920s? (2023)

Even the people dealing the drugs don’t know what’s in them in most instances (2023)

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