Letters: It's high time...

In India, there is a ban on alcohol advertisements in the mass media. Whether there should be a ban on alcohol products or not involves nuances missed by people on either side of the argument.

All major alcoholic product manufacturers advertise, ostensibly non-alcoholic products with the same name, logos and overall appearances as their alcoholic products. Most of the advertised products are actually non-existent. In all the cases, manufacturers are paying more for the advertisements of these proxy products in a month than the decades of sales of these products. It is a travesty of law that should be amended without any delay. If, as a society, we decide that it is acceptable to have alcohol advertisements in the mass media then that's fine, but what is the point of allowing such an openly exploited loophole? If we decide that there should be a continuation of the ban on the advertising of alcoholic products then the manufacturers should be forced to comply with having different visible logos and names for alcoholic and non-alcoholic products.

Sukant Khurana New York

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