It's always best to abstain.
"Toxic bootleg liquor kills 143 people in eastern India; Homemade brew methanol-tainted; 10 suspects held" December 16, 2011|By Bikas Das, Associated Press
SANGRAMPUR, India - Bootleg liquor containing toxic methanol killed 143 people and sickened dozens more who drank the cheap, illicit brew bought at small shops in eastern India, officials said yesterday. Police arrested 10 suspected bootleggers.
Emergency medical teams rushed to the village outside Kolkata, and thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital. Inside, bodies lay on the floor covered with quilts while the ill waited on staircases to be treated. Groups of men sat in the halls with saline drips running into their arms.
Abdul Gayen cried inconsolably for his son, Safiulla, a laborer who drank some of the liquor Monday night and then complained of lightheadedness. When Safiulla woke up the next morning, he fell and began frothing at the mouth, Gayen said. He died before his family could get him to the hospital.
“Safiulla was the lone bread earner in our family. I don’t know what will happen to us now,’’ he said.
Illegal liquor operations flourish in the slums of urban India and among the rural poor who can’t afford the alcohol at state-sanctioned shops.
Ever notice the disproportionate amount of liquor stores located in AmeriKan slums?
The liquor, often mixed with cheap chemicals to increase potency and profit, causes illness and death sometimes - and occasionally mass carnage.
Many of the victims - day laborers, street hawkers, rickshaw drivers - had gathered along a road near a railway station after work to drink the illicit booze they bought for 10 rupees (20 cents) a half liter, less than a third of the price of legal alcohol, district magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said.
They later began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches, and frothing at the mouth, he said.
Angry villagers later ransacked booze shops around the village of Sangrampur, about 20 miles south of Kolkata, the city formerly known as Calcutta.
Police arrested 10 people in connection with making and distributing the methanol-tainted booze and demolished 10 illicit liquor dens in the area, said Luxmi Narayan Meena, district superintendent of police....
Despite religious and cultural taboos against drinking among Indians, 5 percent - roughly 60 million people - are alcoholics. Two-thirds of the alcohol consumed in the country is illegal homemade liquor or undocumented liquor smuggled in, according to The Lancet medical journal.
Ever notice the Lancet is always credible -- unless they claim over a million Iraqis were been killed by the US invasion and occupation?
The state of Gujarat, where all liquor is banned, just approved a death penalty for making, transporting, or selling spurious liquor that kills people.
See what I'm saying about not trying hard enough on prohibition, America?
(Blog editor smiles at his sarcasm)
The strict measures were proposed after 157 people died from drinking a bad batch of liquor in the city of Ahmedabad in 2009.
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Why is it I always feel like I have a hangover after reading the Boston Globe?
