Burma’s Youth Drown Their Sorrows

By KYI WAI / RANGOON

The Kahthain festival represents the end of Buddhist lent and is an occasion for devotees to offer robes to the monks. Yet despite the religious nature of the day, dozens of young men are staggering around drunk.

Some of them gather under a tree where some women have set up a stall to collect donations for the local monastery. Behind them, the youths shout at each other and swear.

Two of them are so drunk they cannot stand up, and as they lean on the sacred tree for support it sways and strains under their weight.

“In the old days, some of us would drink alcohol to celebrate after the festivals had finished,” said a 68-year-old man in Thar Kay Ta Township in Rangoon. “Nowadays the youngsters are drunk all the time.”

He said that in his community there are about 50 households with a population of about 500, yet there are no less than 13 liquor shops or bars.

“Wherever you point your finger, there’s a bar or stall selling liquor,” said a resident of Hlaing Thar Yar Township.

According to a lecturer in the psychology department at Rangoon University, the customers are of various ages and backgrounds. The only connection they have is the economic and social stress they suffer from.

"When many men encounter problems and they cannot solve them, they go straight to the liquor store, buy a bottle, drink it and then fall asleep to forget,” he said. “However, the constant worry and stress drives them to keep drinking until finally they are addicted to alcohol.”

Another reason so many men spend their days in bars is that it is so economical, said the lecturer. While a cup of tea or coffee in a tea shop costs 250 to 300 kyat (US $0.20-0.30), a shot of cheap grain spirit sells for just 50 kyat ($0.04). That means sitting in a bar getting drunk with their friends is a seemingly cost-effective pastime for many disenfranchised youths.

A bar owner in Shwe Pyi Thar Township said that more and more bars are sprouting up to take advantage of the situation.

“Selling alcohol is simple math,” he said. “You get a profit of 400 or 500 percent on every drink.”

With shots of liquor so cheap, it seems unlikely that such a business could be so lucrative. The bar owner explained that he buys a gallon of 95 percent concentrated spirit at the market for 2,400 kyat ($1.90) where it is sold in tanks.

One bottle of concentrated spirit can then be mixed with four bottles of water and is immediately put on the shelf for sale. One gallon of distilled concentrated spirit can therefore produce 30 bottles of diluted liquor.

Bar owners also purchase locally produced rum for 2,000 kyat ($1.60) a bottle or local whiskey for 2,600 kyat ($2.08) a bottle. At the roadside bars they sell a single shot of rum or whiskey for 250 kyat.

An ex-alcoholic said that some unscrupulous dealers make moonshine by soaking the tip of a thin stick of bamboo with Cyclodiene insecticide and then setting it alight. They then scrape the ashes into bottles of concentrated alcohol and sell the poisonous concoction as “high-grade liquor.”

A private distiller estimated that 75 percent of “imported” spirits for sale in Burma are counterfeit.

The moonshine industry has spawned a market in recycling empty bottles. Garbage collectors will even pay for certain bottle types.

According to a physician in Rangoon, the number of fatal incidents relating to cirrhosis of the liver has been increasing steadily in Burma. He said that 97 percent of these cases were alcohol-related.

There are reported to be more than 20 state-owned and private distilleries operating in Burma, all owned by former military officers, ministers or their cronies.

Since only the General Administration Department of the Home Ministry holds the authority to issue permits to sell alcohol, and that permit often costs more than 1 million kyat ($800), most bar owners in Rangoon only apply to sell low-grade alcohol, then stock rum and whiskey under the counter.

The Burmese authorities officially stopped issuing permits to distilleries in 1999. However, the illicit production of alcohol is now escalating significantly in rural areas.