On alcohol
There were oddly two closely related articles in the Nov. 14, 1996 edition, i.e. Serve alcoholic drinks to foreigners only and RI's education system creates a stupid nation. A lot of dogmatic people think that we can simply eliminate sexual harassment and rape by ordering women to cover up, prevent AIDS by euthanatizing the sufferers or the most current one, develop the nation's morality by banning alcohol. It would be really convenient for us to believe that we can find solutions to all of the world's problems by being so naively simplistic or, more precisely, fatalistic like that.
It's not alcohol that ruins one's morality. Alcohol abuse does. It has been proven that regular consumption of a certain amount of alcohol is in fact quite beneficial to one's metabolism and immunity against viruses. Alcohol consumption with common sense is not a threatening danger. I am not saying this to encourage people to start drinking, since I myself have never liked any kind of alcoholic drinks. But let's talk in proportion and put aside emotions.
If we adopt a dogmatic point of view, then it becomes mandatory for the state to also ban tape (traditional food, a specialty from Bandung, made from fermented cassava), since it also contains alcohol. It's so laughable to even contemplate that alcohol should be served to foreigners only. Where is the so- called personal freedom? The state, through its officials, should stop acting like a father by treating its citizens like children who are incapable of deciding for themselves what to do or think. What's so wrong, anyway, with drinking one or two beers while you're socializing with your friends? And besides, not all Indonesians blindly believe that they shouldn't drink at all.
If and when the state completely bans alcohol, like drugs, its price will soar. The sale of liquor on the black market will be rampant, and I bet people will still drink anyway. Those alcoholics who can't afford the high prices will increasingly menace the society. We should have learned that there is a paradox in total control and prohibition; it does anything but extinguish people's desire to challenge the rule.
It is not without reasons that the Netherlands and Sweden loosened up on their drug policies. If we are intelligent enough, we will question why they did this. Do we realize that they are gaining more control by applying less control? They know precisely who and what percentage of their citizens are addicts and where they get their supplies. At the same time, they are removing all the glamor attached to drugs and reducing their prices as well as the crime rate, since the addicts don't have to use any violent means to afford what they need and the appeal of drug dealing is no longer there. We know that the huge profits generated from this business have justified all kinds of persecution by drug culprits.
How right Romo Mangun was when he said that as a nation, we are becoming more and more stupid.
RAHAYU RATNANINGSIH
Jakarta