OPINION - Our Cabinet ministers have been bombarded with innumerable questions around the liquor and tobacco issue connected to the spread of the virus.
How does tobacco influence the number of valuable beds available at hospital?
How will unbanning liquor affect trauma units?
And the answers invariably point, sooner or later, to the economy. Not health, not morality, not necessity. In other words, the real role of liquor and tobacco have been fully exposed as being purely to boost profits, but these bad habits have been shown to seriously affect our basic survival in times like these when pandemics can easily wipe us out.
So, does this not prove that this terrible twin pair of vices is something that eventually has to be also dumped, like other possibly lifelong changes such as hefty congregations and gaudy parties?
Consumption of liquor and cigarette smoking are not divinely ordained.
Unlike hugging and socialising at close quarters, which seem perfectly natural, tobacco and alcohol addiction are definitely “acquired skills.”
Are we about to see the Covid-19 paradoxically beginning to cause the gradual eradication of these vices so that we can improve the quality of the only valuable thing that now matters - our very lives?
Ebrahim Essa Durban
Daily News
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