Apart from this, there are a total of 16 distilleries in Punjab where 23, 90,000 litre liquor is prepared every day. Apart from this, there are a total of 16 distilleries in Punjab where 23, 90,000 litre liquor is prepared every day.

After reports that Punjab consumes opioids worth Rs 7,500 crore including Rs 6,500 crore heroin every year, an RTI query filed by social worker Jai Gopal Dhiman has revealed that the state consumed liquor worth Rs 35,558 crore in the last decade.

The RTI query with the Punjab and Excise department has revealed that the state’s liquor consumption has gone almost double in the last ten years.

While in 2006-7, the Punjab government earned around Rs 1,363 crore from liquor sale, this amount has gone up to Rs 3,057 crore in 2015-16.

According to sources, the number of liquor vends have also gone up from around 7,100 including 2,529 English liquor vends to nearly 10,000 vends including 3,500 English vends in the same corresponding period. There was also a sharp rise between 2011 to 2014, around 59 per cent, in liquor consumption in the state.

Apart from this, there are a total of 16 distilleries in Punjab where 23, 90,000 litre liquor is prepared every day.

Social worker Jai Gopal Dhiman, who sought the information under RTI, said that every political party in the state has been raising the issue of drug addiction but no one is worrying about the increase in liquor consumption in the state.

“Nearly 32 to 33 crore bottles are consumed in Punjab annually and our ministers and governments have been promoting it by auctioning liquor vends just to earn the revenue at the cost of people of Punjab, who are already gutted into drug addiction,” said Dhiman.

“Apart from Punjab Made Liquor (PML) and India Made Foreign liquor (IMFL), the state consumes liquor from army canteens and liquor smuggled from other states,” Dhiman added.

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