Health experts agree that alcohol do have effect on human beings ranging from headaches to heart failures and abnormal behaviours . It is true that alcohol can make people feel confident, less inhibited and more euphoric. This stimulant effect is the main motivating factor for the increasing popularity in alcohol consumption. Alcohol is credited for its notoriety in inducing depression, sleep disturbances and sometimes make people fall into coma thereby making the drug a dangerous depressant. Alcohol affects the liver, pancreas and the entire cardiovascular system with women at a greater risk. The sad aspect is that a woman who drinks passes on the effects to the unborn child. In Ghana there is ample evidence of broken relationships, disintegration of families and untimely deaths as a result of alcohol. Several lives have also been lost on the roads due to drink driving.
One can therefore comfortably conclude that alcohol presents a fatalistic prospect for the future and at best a pessimistic and deceitful bliss for its users. Unfortunately, Ghanaians on one hand condemn alcohol intake especially among children and at the same time demonstrate pictorially yet falsefully that alcohol is simply a sign of good living. The media continue to associate alcohol with beauty, success, love and worse of it all, an antidote to all sexual disorders with impunity. The National Media Commission, the Advertisers Association of Ghana, the Food and Drugs Board and other state agencies, which are supposed to correct this anomaly, look on helplessly. Are we by this admitting that the monetary gains in these adverts are more important than the potential dangers to society? The laws of Ghana make it criminal for anyone to send a minor to buy alcoholic beverages as well as sell alcohol yet this practice goes on day in day out across the country. May be the time has come for the state to take a second look at how alcohol is dignified in the country. Alcohol affects Ghanaian society everyday, yet the battle against drugs seems to be centred on only cocaine.
The question as to whether one drinks alcohol or not is immaterial since drinking has a trickle down effects on the entire society. This makes it mandatory for all to help wage a relentless war against alcoholism. Many are those who have never taken alcohol before yet have died from alcohol induced lorry accidents. Those who drink in the hope of forgetting their worries must remember that the same problems will resurface after sometime, with additional health hazards. Those who have conditioned their minds to remain alcoholics should stop blaming witches and other unseen spiritual powers as responsible for their actions. They must make conscious efforts to quit or start preparing their wills, if any, because alcohol is a hidden magnet that attracts its cohorts to the grave. A word to the wise is enough.
BY: GEORGE ASEKERE, GBC-RADIO NEWSROOM IN ACCRA.
