Liquor policy is to be encouraged: Supreme Court

New Delhi: The Supreme Court bench which upheld the Kerala government order barring public consumption of alcohol, other than in five-star hotel bars, also expressed concern over the state issuing licences for consumption of beer and wine, saying this was the “gateway” towards addiction to alcohol.

Justice Vikramajit Sen, who retires on Wednesday, wrote: “History has painstakingly made it abundantly clear prohibition has not succeeded. Therefore strict state regulation is imperative.

The State of Kerala had in the past forayed into prohibition, but found it unimplementable. Thereafter, keeping in mind heavy consumption of alcohol within the territory, it has experimented with other measures to user temperance if not abstemiousness.”

The bench said vulnerable persons, either because of age or proclivity towards intoxication or as a feature of peer pressure, more often than not, succumb to temptation. Banning public consumption of alcohol, therefore, in our considered opinion, cannot but be seen as a positive step towards bringing down the consumption of alcohol, or as preparatory to prohibition.

The bench said the liquor policy, therefore, is to be encouraged and is certainly not to be struck down or discouraged by the courts. How this policy is to be implemented, modified, adapted or restructured is the province of the state government and not of the Judiciary.

The court cannot be blind to the fact that a social stigma at least as far as the family unit is concerned still attaches to the consumption of alcohol (at home). Free trade in alcohol denudes family resources and reserves and leaves women and children as its most vulnerable victims.

Purchasing alcohol from a liquor shop would entail consuming it under the reproachful gaze of the dependants, especially the female members of the family.

Top court too justifies classification of hotels

While justifying the classification of hotels, the bench referred to allegations that Five Star hotels have opened out some of their premises for consumption of liquor not only at depressed rates but also in surroundings which are not commensurate to their Five Star ratings. It said this may be a good and sufficient reason to denude these Hotels of their Five Star gradation.

Such malpractice will have to be immediately erased by the State, as its failure to do so it will only invite further litigation on the grounds that the policy to prohibit public consumption of alcohol is only cosmetic and partisan.

The bench expressed concern for the state issuing licences rampantly for the sale of consumption of beer and wine. If the addiction to alcohol or introduction into this pernicious habit is to be combated, there seems to us to be no justification to allow beer or wine to be publicly consumed.

There cannot be any caveat to the opinion that permitting the consumption of beer and wine is a gateway to the consumption of hard liquor, and indeed is a social malaise in itself.