{"id":102452,"date":"2020-05-17T15:10:53","date_gmt":"2020-05-17T22:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=102452"},"modified":"2020-05-17T15:10:53","modified_gmt":"2020-05-17T22:10:53","slug":"social-distancing-ignored-by-customers-when-liquor-shops-opened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/05\/17\/social-distancing-ignored-by-customers-when-liquor-shops-opened\/","title":{"rendered":"SOCIAL DISTANCING IGNORED BY CUSTOMERS WHEN LIQUOR SHOPS OPENED"},"content":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Asking people to maintain social distance and at the same time opening the liquor shops will ruin the progress achieved so far in combating COVID 19.\u00a0 Most of our people don\u2019t enjoy a drink, they simply drink it as a glass of water,<\/strong> without mixing with soda, water, etc.\u00a0 Rarely they use ice as a supplement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eagerness to have a drink they could not enjoy for the past several weeks was clearly demonstrated by a large number of queues outside bars, from the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A most important element of Sri Lankan drinking is that they naturally drink with friends an unlimited quantity, with a famous bite, Beef, Pork, or Chicken devil.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With curfews operating at night times from 8 pm, they gather in private residences in groups of friends, similarly to a Club environment.\u00a0 They drink almost till 3 or 4 am. The Police raids are unlikely to enter private residences during curfew hours to arrest these culprits.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Korea, which has controlled COVID 19,\u00a0 relaxed the social distancing and opened Clubs and Bars a couple of days ago.\u00a0 There is a sudden surge of infected persons since the relaxation 2 days ago.\u00a0\u00a0 This has prompted the South Korean government to close Bars and Clubs and re-introduce social distancing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We urge the President and the Prime Minister to close all Bars and Clubs for an indefinite period of time. \u00a0\u00a0Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya recently confirmed that the damage to the national economy, health, safety, criminal activities as a result of liquor consumption could be as high as 7 times <\/strong>greater than the revenue otherwise generated from selling liquor.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For man Sri Lanka the kick from liquor is not enough.\u00a0 Liquor does not work itself alone for them.\u00a0\u00a0 Sri Lankan drink Gal Arak, mix with Three Coins or Larger Beer.\u00a0\u00a0 This opens a market for Drug Runners, who sell large quantities to those who are intoxicated.\u00a0 The recent capture of a massive haul of Drugs is a testimony to assess the size of the local market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nis a strong case for the closure of liquor shops.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nMessrs Gotabaya and Mahinda cannot stamp out liquor from Sri Lanka, no one will\never be able to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE Asking people to maintain social distance and at the same time opening the liquor shops will ruin the progress achieved so far in combating COVID 19.\u00a0 Most of our people don\u2019t enjoy a drink, they simply drink it as a glass of water, without mixing with soda, water, etc.\u00a0 Rarely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-m-d-p-dissanayake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}