The other side of liquor ban

AVURUDU: Liquor outlets may have run dry but it was certainly no dry New Year, this Avurudu festival. It was not just the Sun God which cast his benevolent smile on the Lankan populous this festive season.

There was also Bacchus that most reviled of Gods in the pantheon who no doubt may have been proud of the scale of the pooja paid to him during the Avurudu period.

It also underlined once again the truism that Sri Lanka ranked among the highest in the countries with the largest number of boozers. If not, how could one explain a bottle of Gal arrack normally priced at Rs. 375 going for a staggering Rs. 1500 during the period of enforced abstinence.

If the well meant intention of the powers that be, was to reduce the strain on the domestic budget through an extended shut down of liquor bars it certainly had the opposite effect which should open the eyes of the authorities on the feasibility of such moves.

For, as evident, the enforced ban not only drilled a huge hole in the domestic budget but it also drilled holes in the intestines of the habitual imbiber by the rot gut that was freely available during the enforced nonagathe.

So it was another Avurudu celebrated in high spirits thanks to the ever present bootlegger operating under the patronage of politicians and law enforcement authorities, raking in astronomical profits which otherwise would have gone into the State coffers.

All Governments have displayed a predilection to enforce morality down the throats of the populace. Liquor shops are closed at the drop of a hat.

There is a famous case where all liquor shops in the Western Province were closed on the day of the funeral of its Chief Minister. But the tippler found ample ways to drown his sorrows while the law looked the other way.

Then there was also a hilarious instance where liquor shops were closed during a local poll held on a staggered basis wherein one had only to walk a few meters to purchase one’s liquor quota from a local authority division which had no poll from one where the election was on.

If the actions of the authorities are to be justified where domestic budgets go how could one explain stockpiling liquor well before an anticipated closure. Won’t this affect domestic budgets in a more telling way.

Booze is today the driving force at any celebration or festival and it is futile to impose abstinence by official fiat. Besides, withdrawal symptoms of a liquor addict could cause more harm than is meant to prevent through a prolonged lay off.

Rambler

Teenager brains are wired for risky behaviour

TEENS: A new study has found that using educational and prevention programs alone to persuade teens to keep away from drinking, smoking or taking drugs are unlikely to be effective, as competing systems within the brain make adolescents more susceptible to engaging in risky or dangerous behaviour.

The study was conducted by Laurence Steinberg, distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University.

As part of this study, psychologists focused on research on adolescent brain development over the past 10 years to find why the educational programs or interventions that have been developed have not been especially effective.

Researchers found that heightened risk taking in adolescence is the result of competition between two very different brain systems, the socioemotional and cognitive-control networks, that are undergoing maturation during adolescence, but along very different timetables.

The socioemotional system, which processes social and emotional information, becomes more assertive during puberty, allowing adolescents to become more easily aroused and experience more intense emotion, and to become more sensitive to social influence, while the cognitive-control system gains strength only gradually and over a longer period of time.

The cognitive-control system is the part of the brain that regulates behavior and makes the ultimate decisions, but is still maturing during adolescence and into a person’s mid-20s at least.

However, researchers also found that the socioemotional network is not in a state of constantly high activation during adolescence. For example, when individuals are not emotionally excited or are alone, and at such times the cognitive-control network is strong enough to impose regulatory control over impulsive and risky behaviour, even in early adolescence.

In the presence of peers, however, or in situations where emotions run high, the socioemotional network becomes sufficiently activated to diminish the regulatory effectiveness of the cognitive-control network.

“The presence of peers increases risk taking substantially among teenagers. In one of our lab’s studies, for instance, the presence of peers more than doubled the number of risks teenagers took in a video driving game. In adolescence, then, not only is more merrier — it is also riskier,” Steinberg said.

“There is a window of vulnerability in teens between puberty and mid-to-late adolescence in which kids have already started to experience the increased arousal of the socioemotional system, but they don’t yet have a fully mature cognitive control system.

Because their cognitive-control system is still not fully mature, it is more easily disrupted, especially when the socioemotional system is quite excited. And it gets excited by the presence of other people,” he added.

Steinberg advocated stricter laws and policies that would limit opportunities for immature judgment that often have harmful consequences.

For example, strategies such as raising the price of cigarettes, more vigilantly enforcing laws governing the sale of alcohol, expanding adolescents’ access to mental-health and contraceptive services, or raising the driving age would likely be more effective than education in limiting adolescent smoking, substance abuse, pregnancy, and automobile fatalities.

ANI