Richard Lord

T&T is ranked as the 98th among coun­tries with the high­est con­sump­tion of al­co­hol. Min­is­ter of State in the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry Ali­cia Hospedales said so dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to Wednes­day's de­bate on the Pro­vi­sion­al Col­lec­tion of Tax­es Or­der in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. She said that in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed by the World health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO).

Hospedales said the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to in­crease tax­es on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts was a good one as it is in­tend­ed to act as a de­ter­rent to users of those prod­ucts. Re­spond­ing to claims from Op­po­si­tion MPs Ramesh Ma­haraj, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Chan­dresh Shar­ma that the ini­tia­tive was not like­ly to suc­ceed, Hospedales said she begged to dif­fer. She said the mea­sure would be suc­cess­ful.

The min­is­ter said T&T had been ranked among the coun­tries with the high­est num­ber of Al­co­holics Anony­mous groups per capi­ta in the world.

She added that it was a strong in­di­ca­tor that al­co­hol use and abuse "was a ma­jor prob­lem in T&T." She said from sta­tis­tics it seemed that cit­i­zens of this coun­try were drink­ing more al­co­hol than wa­ter.

Hospedales said the use of al­co­hol had caused a myr­i­ad of prob­lems for in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and the so­ci­ety as a whole. She quot­ed sta­tis­tics which showed that in T&T "66 per cent of high­way deaths was due to al­co­hol use, 63 per cent of fire deaths, 60 per cent of mo­tor cy­cle deaths, 50 per cent pedes­tri­an ac­ci­dents, 50 per cent of drown­ings have all been due to al­co­hol con­sump­tion."