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Drink responsibly?
DEAR EDITOR,
The colourful advertisements for the Chutney Masala rum giveaways are an insult to those women and men who have suffered as a result of the rum drinking culture in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean.
The prominent displays of ‘official rum’ are also a slap in the face of those who struggle to curb alcohol consumption in Guyana.
What is even uglier is that there is no shame, no remorse, in targeting the rural areas. Chutney is one of the products of the rural people’s experience in the Caribbean.
Is it so important to the Caribbean that we will blindly ignore, in this review of culture, the fact that rum has to play this dominance?
Doesn’t rum have enough prominence already in the lives of those people, especially Chutney lovers, who have suffered through alcohol?
Once again, the Government seems to have compromised on a commitment by the Ministry of Health to review alcohol advertising and the use of private sector funds to promote alcohol use.
Surely, the Government and the sellers know that there is no such thing as drinking responsibly for many of the people? Ambiguous messages have not worked.
Or is that because people have started to drink responsibly, and there is the need to get them to drink more?
Caribbean culture is rife with the caricatures of the ‘drunken man’.
Few Caribbean works exist which do not refer to the problems of alcohol use in the lives of the people in the Caribbean.
Instead of using CARIFESTA X to change the culture — to show that it is possible to enjoy Chutney without rum, as many have learnt to do — the Government and producers seem, instead, to want to reinforce the destruction of more lives of people.
Vidyaratha Kissoon
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