ThaiHealth was spurred on by the discovery that celebrations at traditional festivals had been replaced with binge drinking. The foundation blamed saturation marketing by alcohol producers.

ThaiHealth's vice chairman Prof Udomsil Srisangnam said the foundation was already seeing positive results in pilot projects underway in 20 provinces.

In Lamphun ThaiHealth was promoting alcohol-free funerals. As well as reducing alcohol abuse, dry funerals were an average of Bt20,000 cheaper. Lamphun will declare itself the country's first alcohol-free-funeral province next month when the project will be expanded to all districts, said Songkran Takchokedee of ThaiHealth's Stop Drinking Network.

"In the past few decades alcohol has dramatically ruined the value of traditional festivals," Udomsil added. "People of younger generations don't even know the essence of festivals because all they've seen year after year was people getting wildly drunk."

Udomsil noted Thai monarchs had in the past vowed to abstain from alcohol, often when embarking on important overseas journeys and would only take a drink if protocol demanded.

"Drinking is not a Thai tradition. Alcohol companies have long tried to mislead society on that one," he added.

This Loy Krathong ThaiHealth would sponsor communities that promoted alcohol-free festivals, said Suprida Adulyanond.

New government moves to ban alcohol advertising would help enormously by curbing alcohol producers' exploitation of traditional festival times, Udomsil said.

Nevertheless, a "long-embedded" culture of drinking needed to be weeded out, he added.

The ad ban takes effect on December 3.

The Stop Drinking Network and its one million members across the country will report ad-ban violations.

"Of course, we don't expect overnight success. Take the anti-smoking issue as an example. We've worked on that for more than a decade with so little success," Udomsil said.

Arthit Khwankhom The Nation