The ban on Chinese medicine shops selling liquor is highly welcome. Liquor as a product should not be mixed with medicine, whether Chinese or Indian or Malay or modern medicine. It is high time that medicine and liquor are separated.
We welcome the decision of the Selangor government to ban liquor sales from Chinese medicine shops. We have nothing against Chinese medicine shops. They are good and serve a multi-ethnic clientele. Poor people of all races go to Chinese medicine shops. But these shops also sell liquor and for some, these liquor is medicine. But it is not so in other cultures.
These shops also sell a lot of cheap alcohol in small plastic bottles. They have been selling them for decades under the cover of medicines. These sales are damaging young people, who frequent these shops for the cheap liquor. These sales have to stop.
Nobody is against Chinese medicine. They are highly valued and cherished, but these shops also sell cheap liquor.
The Selangor government’s move to ban Chinese medicine shops from selling cheap liquor will benefit the Malaysian poor who have made a habit of consuming it. The ban is not against Chinese medicine, but the sale of cheap liquor.
Medicine shops should sell medicine and not cheap liquor.
C SIVARRAAJH is MIC Youth chief.