Mizoram - Alcohol Prohibition

Alcohol Prohibition

In 1996 the Government of Mizoram totally banned liquor under the Mizoram Liquor Total Prohibition (MLTP) Act. The church leaders or Mizoram Kohhran Hruaitute Committee continue to insists that state government keeps the state free of alcohol. Critics are of the opinion that the Liquor Ban Act, imposed in the Christian-dominated state from 1996, has totally failed and has only proliferated bootlegging of poor quality liquor, resulting in fatalities and increased prices of smuggled liquor. "If a law fails, it is either to be lifted or amended. We have experimented with the Liquor Ban Act for more than ten years, and witnessed that it has failed to stop what it is meant to stop. It only made Mizoram the wettest dry state. One can find plenty of liquor, only the prices are extraordinarily high," said former Mizoram chief secretary M. Lalmanzuala.

The retired IAS officer further blamed the wrong teaching of the European missionaries for the Church's negative attitude towards liquor which he claimed had never been a problem, but part of religious rituals before the Missionary era. The missionaries instruction, he said in his research paper, was compounded by the war-like confrontation between the well-to-dos and the poor in the pre-Christian Mizo society.

"Only the well-to-dos afforded Zu or rice beer which was brewed from surplus rice. The poor people who did not afford the Zu were the first to adopt Christianity and these people started hating the Zu which was a status symbol of the well-to-do people," he said in his research paper Mizo Culture and Liquor.

Some have argued that the complete ban on alcohol has led young people to search for other stimulants resulting in a growing drug abuse problem in the state. Although locally made alcohol is available and often in poor quality and taste, prohibition has checked the movement of liquor.

Early missionaries had directly attacked liquor and converts felt that liquor consumption ravaged the community, occupying an unwelcome position in Mizo society. Most urban Mizos do not support the continuation of the MLTP Act in contrast to rural areas which represents more than half the population of Mizoram.