Poison Paki Hooch

Legalize it.

'Doctors say my eyesight is gone, totally, irreversibly gone. Allah has punished me because I did not respect the holy month of Ramadan,' Mohammad Jamil says from his hospital bed in Pakistani port city of Karachi after a drinking experience that has scarred him for life.

Jamil, 22, may consider himself lucky to have been only blinded. More than 40 people who partook from the same batch of home-made hard liquor died hours after they were admitted to hospital suffering from nausea, severe cramps, shaking and blurred eyesight.

Police on Saturday arrested six people for selling Kuppi or Tharra, a cheap methyl-based alcohol intended for industrial use but which is a standard ingredient in illegal moonshine that is easily obtained across the predominantly Muslim country.

With only three per cent of Pakistan's population of 160 million are entitled to buy and consume alcohol, quality-controlled liquor produced by the country's monopoly brewery is pricey and restricted to the black market.

'A Muslim has to pay 650 rupees (11 US dollars), almost double the price a Christian pays at a liquor shop, to buy a one litre vodka bottle from an illegal supplier,' said Chaudhry Tariq, head of Islamabad's Excise Department which issues alcohol permits to non- Muslims.

High prices on the black market drive millions of Muslim imbibers to...

More at the (hic) link.