Alcohol in society

Advice given by H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi :

"The greatest problem of Europe is – real problem – that they drink. ... Now this is a curse of Europe that they all drink, and drinking is something very difficult. They can’t give it up, poor things, they are slaves, slaves of drinking. ... This is the biggest problem of Europe, but do you know it is much worse in America. ...
Indians who do not drink in India, here they come and drink. When they come here, then they think it is something ideal and they drink. I’ve known many like that who came abroad and started drinking.
So this is the big problem. You should openly talk about it to everyone, that what is drinking is stupidity. ...
You see, in India we, I don’t know, somehow we have solved the problem. People don’t drink so much because from the very beginning there the drinking is regarded as a very bad thing. If a girl could know that the fellow drinks, she will never marry [him]. So society [in India] doesn’t accept drinking, is a good thing. ...
Have you seen a man who is drunk? What do you think of them? They are more than mad people. People are mad because something gone wrong, but these are mad because they have been drinking. So you have to tell them, 'You are all mad. You are going to ruin your country.'
(6th Night of Navaratri 2007, Sydney, Australia)

"If the majority is stupid, then all the stupidity is regarded as great. They have no brains they have no intelligence to understand how can these things help; alcohol for example. I mean alcohol, it has done no good to anyone, but alcohol … without alcohol you are no good. They won’t talk to you they say that unless you have alcohol you cannot talk. And it is so rampant, it is so much in the society that all the parties I attended, except for me and my husband, everybody was drinking, and drinking much more than normal because it was free. They are all poisons, these are all poisons spoiling us completely from one to another. This one is a taboo now for cigarettes, imagine - why to smoke? I don’t understand, like a chimney people are smoking. But they have no courage to give it up now. Everywhere, no smoke, no smoke, no smoke. When will they start ‘No alcohol’? Everybody sees that it’s so dangerous. It is against human awareness, everybody sees it. You see people falling down, you see people cursing each other, fighting. I tell you, if you stop this alcoholism all this shamelessness will go away, because when you take alcohol your awareness is abated."
(Shri Ganesha Puja 1997)