MOKOKCHUNG, AUGUST 25 (MExN): The Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang (Ao Baptist Church Association) on Sunday said the concern raised by the Cabinet on August 23, 2024, to revisit Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition (NLTP) Act, 1989 has “upturned all right thinking citizens to raise a critical moment on the issue of survival, health, and wholeness safeguarding the fabric of our culture and values.”
“One cannot deny the stark realities of liquor availability and liquor consumption, especially to young people and other vulnerable or high-risk groups. In fact, one of the greatest leading factors for deaths and disability, causing diseases, injuries and health conditions is the consumption of liquor both at macro and micro level. Keeping in mind the context of Nagaland, the detrimental effects begin with annihilation of human lives, increased violence against women, physical abuse, child maltreatment, violent crime, assaults, and homicides,” the press release stated.
From the revenue centric standpoint of public interest, partially lifting of the prohibition act seems appealing, however not at the expense of degrading public health advocacy and intervention policy for consumers because easy access to alcohol outlets is visible among factors with higher level of alcohol consumption, mental health morbidity and mortality and societal impairment, it stated.
The ABAM, therefore, considered the proposals made by the Government to revisit NLTP Act with subversive plan of partial relaxation in the State of Nagaland as absurd as it intends to encourage the availability of liquor totally or in parts. Total lifting or relaxing this Act might bring meager revenue out of its galaxy of solutions to be delivered to the society, it stated.
Who benefits for whom at what cost when many lives are endangered, health security is shattered and community is disrupted, it questioned. Instead of envisioning how to engage globally and locally, a way forward in building healthy society, relaxation of NLTP Act, however, deflects our retreat, back to the era before NLTP Act 1989, it contented.
Vowing to “hold firm once again to the ways our Christian leaders of Nagaland who fasted with tears and sacrificed their lives for this noble cause,” ABAM has urged individuals, churches and civil societies to focus on intervention and prevention efforts which includes enactment of vigor and effective policies to curtail the increased use of liquor in the entire State of Nagaland.
