Fact Sheets

Alcohol and Drug Use in Nepal

• Alcohol production contributes more than 50% of total excise duty and more than 6% share of national revenue.
  
• 90% of road accidents are attributed to drink driving.
  
• 10% of violence against women is attributed to alcohol used by the spouse.
  
• Although more than 60% of the total population is under the category of traditional alcohol users only 39% use alcohol with 48% of males and 29% of females.
  
• Traditional alcohol non-users are much more likely to use drugs over the traditional alcohol user.
  
• It is found that women living in rural areas are more likely to use alcohol than those in urban areas. More than 1/3 of women in rural areas are currently using alcohol as against 3 in 10 in urban areas.
  
• The total no. of large, medium and small alcohol industries registered in the ministry of industry, was 68 (36 distilleries, 8 breweries and 24 small-scale industries by the year 2000). The capacity of the alcohol production per year is 42,483,428 liters from medium and large scale industries and 50,000,000 liters of beer from breweries, the small scale industries have reported their constitutes more than 50% of total exise duty and 6% of the total national revenue.
  
• Almost 46% of women who belong to traditional user group are currently using one or other type of alcohol while the comparable figure for women belonging to non-traditional user category is only 3%.
  
• The consumption of alcohol is prevalent among almost all ethnic groups, irrespective of caste hierarchy.
  
• Children of alcoholics are found to show less social competency to have more internalizing and externalizing behaviours, to take part in more negative activities, have lower academic achievement, and more psychologically distressed.
  
• The MOH (1998) estimated that there were more than 50,000 drug users in Nepal, excluding those using cannabis, alcohol and tobacco.
  
• The overall prevalence of drugs is 2.7% with 4.6% for men & 0.6% for women.
  
• On the average, drug prevalence is 2.7%; 4.6% for men & 0.6% for women.
  
• The major drugs abused in Nepal, apart from tobacco and alcohol, were cannabis and codeine containing cough syrup, nitrazepam tablets and buprenon-phine injections, glue and opiates. Heroin is the second most prevalent drug in the country and more than 25,000 people depend on it.
  
• About 7300 hectares of land were harvested for tobacco, accounting for 0.3% per hectare of all arable land in Nepal. The production of tobacco is also substantial: approximately 6,580 million cigarettes are produced annually, and the tobacco industry provides employment to more than 10,000 people.