So, you want to drink?

Text and Photos by Henrylito D. Tacio
As part of his efforts to curb criminality in the country, the incoming president Rodrigo R. Duterte is considering a nationwide liquor ban.  He wants to replicate the city ordinance of Davao City that prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages after midnight until 6 in the morning.
“This has nothing to do with denying us of our freedoms,” spokesman Peter Laviña clarified.  In fact, people are not prohibited from drinking in their homes.  High end hotels are exempted from the ban.
Actually, the reason why Davao has liquor ban is because people, including the restaurant staff and customers, have to work the following day. “This liquor ban is because we have to work the next day,” the 71-year-old mayor of Davao told local media.
In his Facebook account, someone wrote: “To those who want to drink after work, it’s better to start the session earlier.  Take advantage of the Happy Hour.  If you start drinking from 6-7 pm, by the time it’s already 10 pm you are already loaded.  So before midnight, you can go home and take the much-needed rest so you can work the following day.”
Aside from seeing a correlation between drunkenness and crime, Duterte also observed that alcohol drinking is one of the culprits of road accidents.  This is true in most parts of the country. 
“Vehicular accidents are the biggest manmade killers in the Philippines,” wrote Cai Ordinario in an article published in Business Mirror.  Quoting data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), he reported that some 532 vehicular accidents nationwide caused the death of 1,240 Filipinos between 2003 and 2013.
“That means annually, 53 vehicle accidents kill an average of 124 people a year,” Ordinario surmised, adding that with such high stakes in vehicular accidents, those commonly perceived “killers” such as structural fires and sea mishaps “pale in comparison.”
The PSA data showed there were 662 Filipinos who died in structural fires and another 635 people perished in sea mishaps during the same 10-year period.
“Drivers under the influence of alcohol and those taking dangerous drugs are considered as impaired drivers — a major contributing factor to road mishaps,” wrote Gelyka Ruth R. Dumaraos inThe DOH Files of the Department of Health.
Reactions about the liquor ban to be implemented by Duterte vary, but most people seem to approve it.  “It’s about time,” was all Espie Angelica A. De Leon, a staff of the information institute of the Department of Science and Technology, could say.
Dan Vallescas Adorador, who hails from Butuan, has the same idea.  “It serves only right.  It’s about time to instill national discipline.  Many good things will come out of it, boosted productivity, less crimes, healthier nation.”
“I like it based on the conditions (Duterte) stated. It’s not an absolute prohibition naman eh,” said Bernard Supetran, a travel writer from Cebu.
“Yes, the ban is absolutely a good thing,” said Joe Torres, a journalist who is now based in Bangkok, Thailand. “It’s not only good for the wallet; it will also lessen the number of intoxicated drivers on the road. Discipline on things that we are used to doing in excess is a good start for change that everybody is hoping for in this country.”
Kenley Yap Wong, a young professional from Manila, thinks the liquor ban is a great idea. “There are many people who drink in the streets here, especially outside the public market.  Sometimes, you don’t feel safe when you go home at night.”
“Good for health, bad for business,” commented Paul Vesagas, a health professional who works in Cebu.  And someone from Baguio said: “(The liquor ban) is a big joke.  There are more serious issues in the country that needs attention from the national government.”
Ethanol (the alcohol that’s drunk) and the carbon dioxide (yes, the same chemical that causes global warming) are the natural excreta of yeast-consuming sugars (those found in fruits, grains, saps, and nectars in all plants).   Yeasts are ubiquitous.
The Babylonians and Egyptians (where the Biblical Moses grew up) found that if they crushed grapes or warmed and moistened grain, the covered mush would bubble and become a drink with a kick.
French microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur discovered that yeasts are single-cell, living fungi and that fermentation is their act of survival.  Yeasts can’t get directly until brewers first “malt” their barley; that is, moisten and warm it so that it germinates just enough to release enzymes that convert starches into simple sugars.
In itself, alcohol is a toxin.  Once alcohol concentration reaches about 14%, or the sugar runs out, the multiplying yeasts die and fermentation ends.  A stronger drink requires distillation, in which substances are vaporized and then condensed by cooling.
The origins of distillation, however, are ambiguous.   The Arabs get credit not so much for the process but for the word. But as far as history is concerned, alcohol was first distilled in the Middle Ages, at a medical school in Salerno, Italy.
There are all sorts of alcohol these days.  Considered an important medicine, wine was boiled and the vapors then cooled and condensed to produce a more powerfully concentrated drug.  A Spanish scholar gave this ragged brandy the name “aqua vitae,” which means “the water of life.”
Distilled alcohol evolved in Russia as “vodka,” in Holland as juniper-flavored “jevener” (the French called it “geneivre,” which the British blunted as gin), and passed through charred barrels, peat smoke, and across the Irish Gaelic tongue as “uisce beatha” or whiskey.
It was a matter of time that alcohol was drunk in almost all parts of the world.  In the Philippines, alcohol is one of the most widely consumed drinks. 
“One reason for this may be that the Spanish colonizers not only brought with them the Roman Catholic religion but also their drinking culture,” the website alcoholrehab.com writes.  “There is a generally positive view of alcohol among most Filipinos, but there are growing concerns about the impact drinking is having on society. As the islands become more urbanized there appears to be a growing reliance on alcohol to help people deal with stress.”
Recent studies found that beer is the most popular alcohol drink in the country followed by “lambanog” or “tuba” (whiskey made for coconut sap) and then wine.  In the rural areas, some folks add cooked tablea (grounded cacao beans) to “tuba” to come up with a drink called “kinotil.”
“In the past drinking alcohol was predominately a male pursuit but things have change in recent years,” alcoholrehab.com says. “The Filipinos seem to be adopting a more Western approach to alcohol and so are developing all the problems associated with this. It is common to see people drinking in the media – especially in TV soap operas where it can be portrayed as glamorous or sexy.”
The website quoted earlier ranked Filipinos are the second highest consumers of alcohol in Southeast Asia (after the Indonesians) and the number one wine drinkers.  “It is estimated that 5 million Filipinos drink on a fairly regularly basis – it is believed that 39.9% of the population drink on an irregular basis,” it said.
On the other hand, Euromonitor’s country report on alcohol consumption in 2012 found that Filipino adults each take 5.4 shots of distilled alcohol weekly, making the country third in the list of the world’s heaviest drinkers — after South Koreans’ 13.7 shots and Russians’ 6.3 shots.
In the Philippines, the legal drinking age is 18, but it is estimated that 60% of young people will have at least tried alcohol before then. Underage boys are far more likely to drink than underage girls, but the females seem to be closing the gap.
Eighteen-year old Marc recalled gulping “way too many” alcoholic drinks after a Friday afternoon class with two of his friends in a nearby bar.  First, they ordered whiskeys, then more whiskeys.  “It’s as if we were drinking only fruit juices,” Marc says.  
At 10:00 p.m., they decided to drink some beers.  Marc was half-way of the bottle when he suddenly had the urge to vomit.  He stood up and before he could run, he was already vomiting.  He did not know what happened next and how he was able to get back home.
A national survey from 1989 to 1990 in the Philippines among 15,082 high school and first year and second year college students found that about 36% of high school students and 34.9% of college students used alcohol in their lifetime. Of the surveyed high school students, 2.3% used alcohol that same day, and 5.6% used alcohol in the past two to seven days.   Of college students, 3.7% used alcohol that same day and 16.2% used alcohol in the past two to seven days.
While Duterte is gunning for liquor ban for crimes and accidents, there are other reasons why alcohol drinking should be minimized.  
“Alcohol is the most dangerous drug known to mankind,” wrote Mark S. Gold, author of “The Facts About Drugs and Alcohol.”  “It ruins lives, destroys families, kills thousands of pedestrians.  Despite this fact, alcohol is legal.”
Gold considers alcohol as “the world’s most abused substance.” “We call alcohol a drug because its main ingredient — ethanol — acts as a central nervous system depressant, just like a sleeping pill,” the author explained.  “In high enough doses, it’s also an anesthetic.  At lower doses, it acts as a behavioral stimulant for complex reasons.  How impaired one becomes from the depressant effects of alcohol is directly related to a person’s age, weight, sex, experience and level of tolerance.
“Alcohol, like every other drug, creates tolerance, so the more you use, the more you need to achieve the same effect each time you drink,” Gold further wrote.