Sheila Dikshit fails to reduce drinking age

New Delhi: This one is for the members of the Delhi Cabinet who lost the opportunity to create history on Monday. If you think that by refusing to lower the drinking age from 25 to 21 you are helping curb alcohol consumption, wake up and smell the booze.

Not only are people under 25 years of age drinking alcohol, but they are doing so in their homes, with their husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. They are also guzzling at pubs and restaurants. A snap poll with some ‘underage’ Delhiites to find out how many have been asked for their age-proof before being served alcohol in pubs, clubs, bars or restaurants across Delhi - none of the 12 youngsters we spoke to could remember being turned away even once.

On Monday, the Delhi Government decided it would change the name of the law governing alcohol consumption from Punjab Excise Act to Delhi Excise Act. So you can vote and marry at 18 but you will still be too young to drink beer.  Interestingly, Mumbai seems to be much advanced, the drinking age there being 21. The government thinks alcohol will not kill you after you turn 25. Till that time, stay away from booze, but after 25, you can go ahead and choose your poison.

By continuing to turn a blind eye to the reality that youngsters drink alcohol the government is merely playing to the electoral gallery. With elections round the corner, Sheila Dikshit can ill afford to have the moral police - read BJP in this case - breathe down on her by terming any move to lower the legal drinking age as a sign that she is promoting alcohol consumption. We would say that if you are serious about curbing alcohol consumption, then why not ban it altogether?

Gujarat has prohibition but there is no other state in India with a better home delivery network. Those you need it, get it, neatly packed and delivered to their doorstep. Haryana tried prohibition but had to reverse the decision. During the time that prohibition was in place, there was no let up in cases of road accidents, wife-beating or drunken misdemeanour. And by no stretch of the imagination can one say that because the legal drinking age in Delhi is 25, people under 25 do not drink alcohol.

Our politicians need to grow up and realise that people who are taking decisions about who they want to vote for, who they want to wed, who they want to bed are really not going to guzzle just because you say they can’t.