Narong yesterday disclosed that the ministry would raise the issue at the Cabinet meeting on January 9.

Currently, the PRD enforces a ban between 10pm and 5am.

"This means the PRD has the right to enforce the ban. Now it depends on whether the Cabinet will see the benefits of the ban," Narong said.

PRD director general Pramote Ratvinij separately said his department would wait to hear the Cabinet's decision first.

"We will respond to the Cabinet resolution," he said.

In November, the Public Health Ministry's move to ban all forms of alcohol advertising via a regulation issued by the Food and Drug Administration hit a major snag when the Council of State invalidated the regulation.

However, Public Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla remained committed to his efforts to reduce alcohol consumption in the country.

As part of the campaign, Mongkol yesterday said his ministry was going to propose nine measures - including a tax hike on rice whiskey and beer - to the Cabinet in early January.

Following the third meeting of the Alcohol Consumption Control Committee, Mongkol said the ministry would also launch internal regulations to have all of its offices alcohol-free and set up regional centres to gather complaints and train some officials to act as a "mini FBI" to ensure the regulations are enforced.

The nine national measures included a push to hike the tax on rice whiskey and beer, a ban on duty-free liquor and the separation of alcoholic drinks from the Free Trade Agreement list, Mongkol said.

He said he believed the tax measures would be more effective than the alcohol advertising ban as world-wide studies had come to the same conclusion: ad bans prevent new drinkers but tax measures affect all groups.

The second measure is to reduce people's access to alcohol by limiting the production of

alcoholic drinks and the issuing

of distribution licences and

placing warning pictures on la-bels.

The bid to control alcohol advertising - and eventually stop it completely - was listed as the third measure, while the fourth was to introduce an alcohol control act.

The fifth was to establish alcoholism clinics inside provincial and district hospitals. The sixth was to support the use of alcohol tax money in campaigns to reduce alcohol consumption and prevent problems stemming from drunkenness.

The seventh was to push for alcohol controls to be an important policy of provincial and local administrations and the eighth to support the anti-alcohol campaigns and alliance networks.

The ninth measure is to support research and knowledge ma-nagement to support control measures and evaluate implemented ones.

Mongkol said statistics from 1999 to 2001 found that Thais had elevated their beer-drinking rank from 102nd to 85th in the world - while their whiskey-drinking rank moved from sixth to fifth.

Alcohol was listed in the top three causes of death in Thailand, he said, adding the Central Institute of Forensic Science reported that most people killed in road accidents were found to have a high level of alcohol in their blood.