Part IV, Article 47 of the Indian Constitution, as part of its Directive Principles of State Policy, declares

The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.

Fresh from the freedom struggle under Mahatma Gandhi, who viewed alcohol as a social evil, we would think, it would be very difficult to argue against prohibition. But there were spirited discussions even when the Constitution was being drafted in 1948. Failure of prohibition in the United States, loss of revenue which could be used for solving more pressing issues, trampling on personal liberty and religious freedom of certain scheduled tribes were some of the arguments put forward against prohibition.

They were finally put to rest by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar by reminding, by reminding that this was part of the non-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy and the state is free to decide when to act on it.

Interestingly during these debates, the present day Tamil Nadu was under the Madras Prohibition Act, 1937 and was the poster boy for the prohibitionists.

After a bout of repeal, revival and a number of amendments, the Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act, 1937 ironically formed the basis for the creation of TASMAC in 1983. Today, Tamil Nadu is far from what we would call prohibition, while both the Government of Tamil Nadu and the political parties are addicted to its revenue.

Total prohibition is used by almost all the political parties as an election hook to lure the votes of a certain section of the population, but after coming to power, it is termed impractical and used as a bogeyman to prevent people from questioning the mismanagement and corruption.

I think, the best way to escape this vicious cycle is for the government to stop claiming prohibition as its goal and instead formalize its policy around inculcating temperance i.e voluntary self-restraint among the people. Temperance is a virtue that is needed not only for the common man, but also for the Tamil Nadu Government in actively reducing its dependence on tax revenue from the sale of alcohol.

The ultimate goal of the Department of Prohibition and Excise should be to spend their entire tax revenue on furthering the goal Temperance instead of considering it as revenue source for other schemes.

The current activities of the department are already aligning with the direction I am pushing for here. What is missing is an explicit policy that avoids the trap of prohibition and calls out an explicit policy of Temperance. Shunning the hypocrisy of prohibition would provide a renewed vigour to the real work needed.

I try to discuss below, what a policy of Temperance should look like:

Zoning and Regulation

The goal here is to restrict the place and time where alcohol is sold and consumed. Addiction can be reduced to a large extent by increasing the active human effort needed to acquire the substance.

We already have a number of regulations as part of The Tamil Nadu Liquour Retail Vending (In Shops and Bars) Rules, 2003. which both need to be tightened and rigorously enforced:

1. Age limit: Liquor is not allowed to be sold to persons under 21 year of age. Enforcement is doubtful even though there were strict orders by the government in June 2026.

2. Location: Liquour shops are prohibited within a distance of 50 metres from any place of worship or educational institutions in municipal areas and the limit is relaxed to 100 meters in other areas. In May 2026, the government ordered the closure of 717 TASMAC outlets pointing out that these were within 500m of schools or places of worship. But there still exists a number of other shops that are within 500m, but were not picked for closure. We need a clearly defined rule that preempts extraneous considerations by the deciding officers.

3. Time Limit: TASMAC outlets are open from 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Regular audits are needed to verify this. There are also a number of dry days around the year.

4. Restrict Advertising: Although advertisements for alcohol are banned, surrogate advertisements for liquour brands continue.

If you look only at the advertisements you would think, SNJ makes granulated sugar and drinking glasses, anything but alcohol.

This needs to be stopped.

The ultimate success of the zoning and regulation activities will be when, a person recovering from alcohol addiction can move around and go about their life without encountering any triggers that will make them relapse back into drinking.

Intervention

Identifying people who are addicted to alcohol and facing adverse impact to their regular life and helping them come out of that situation is of utmost importance. The Department should not hesitate to take its intervention campaigns right to the TASMAC outlets to ensure complete reach.

In February 2025, 25 de-addiction centers called 'Kalangarai' were opened in government medical colleges througout the state. But most people who battle daily with alcoholism are not aware of these facilities.

Education

The Tamil culture and religions all shun the consumption of alcohol. The government needs to reinforce the same in school and college curriculum. The actions here may not give immediate results, but will build a future generation that is not addicted to alcohol.

The 2025-26 policy note from the Department of Prohibition and Excise talks about a number of awareness campaigns against alcohol and drug use and funds allocated for them. Are they being effectively used? With the call for more funds to be allocated for these campaigns, we also need to ensure that they are not funneled to NGOs which provide kickbacks.

Today there are a number of addictions that hamper our society. Alcohol is probably the oldest and most widespread. By ensuring that we tackle alcohol addiction in our society, we would clearly build awareness and habits that would resist the other addictions.