Tag Archives: Alcohol

American Women Would Rather Give Up Pregnancy Than Alcohol, Filipino Women Prefer Babies

February 5, 2016 Pol Pinoy Leave a comment

ATLANTA, Georgia (The Adobo Chronicles) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has just released a new report that estimated 3.3 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 years are at risk of exposing their developing baby to alcohol because they are drinking, sexually active, and not using birth control to prevent pregnancy.

“Alcohol can permanently harm a developing baby before a woman knows she is pregnant,” said CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, M.D.

Women of childbearing age are advised not to drink at all if there’s any possibility of pregnancy, federal officials said. Drinking alcohol puts women in danger of having their babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder.

Following the CDC announcment, The Adobo Chronicles conducted two polls — one in the U.S. and another in the Philippines — asking women of childbearing age whether or not they were willing to give up alcohol in order to have healthy babies. The results from the two countries were exact opposites.

U.S. women would rather give up pregnancy because refraining from alcohol jeopardizes their social life and because the cost of rearing babies have skyrocketed over the last decade or so.

Filipino women, on the other hand, said that they would prefer to have babies because Philippine Catholic Bishops have previously stated that children are the country’s greatest resource and that a population increase would be a great boost to the Philippine economy.

It is estimated that yearly remittances to the Philippines from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have reached a staggering $18 Billion.

LGBT, Politics

REPUBLICANS EQUATE HOMOSEXUALITY WITH ALCOHOL, CIGARETTES AND GAMBLING

September 12, 2014 Pol Pinoy Leave a comment

Charlotte, North Carolina (The Adobo Chronicles) – First, Texas Governor Rick Perry compared being gay to alcolohism, telling a San Francisco audience last June that one can choose to stay away from both.

Then, North Carolina Republican Congressman Robert Pittenger said in Charlotte that lighting up a cigarette is a lot like firing someone for being gay — everyone ahould be able to do it.

Finally, to complete the vice trilogy, Minnesotta Representative Michele Bachmann told a senior citizen audience in Minneapolis today that homosexuality is no different from gambling. “You win some, you lose some. But mostly you lose ” she said, refusing to elaborate on what she meant by her statement.

Now the Republican assault on homosexuality is complete. However, as an unintended consequence, tobacco, alcohol and gaming companies have all announced that they were pulling all future campaign contributions to Republican candidates. They also said they will release a master list of Republican candidates who have received campaign funds from them since elections were invented.

Economy, Health & Medicine, Religion

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE PHILIPPINES TO START COLLECTING ‘SIN TAX’

August 21, 2014 Pol Pinoy 1 Comment

File photo: Philippine bishops with former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

Manila, Philippines (The Adobo Chronicles) – The influential Catholic Church in the Philippines can learn a thing or two from the country’s civilian government, especially around taxes.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is closely monitoring developments within the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) which recently announced that tax collection this year has increased because of the sin tax.

The sin tax is collected from sales of alcohol and tobacco. According to BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares, there has been a 29.7 percent increase in excise tax collections in just the first semester of the current fiscal year. This growth was driven by a 44.44 percent increase in collections from tobacco products and 11.62 percent increase from alcohol.

In an emergency meeting convened last night by CBCP president Archbishop Socrates Villegas, the country’s top prelates strategized on how to deal with the declining church revenue from the Sunday collection baskets.

Citing the success of the BIR’s sin tax collections, Villegas proposed that the church institute something similar. He proposed that instead of asking people to pray Hail Marys or the rosary as part of their penance when going to confession, priests will ask repentants to contribute money to the church, much like a sin tax. Priests will be given the authority to determine how much sin tax to impose, depending on whether the sins confessed are mortal or venial sins.

Special collection boxes will be installed beside confessional boxes in all churches in the country for this purpose.

The CBCP expects to increase its collections by 200 percent once this proposal is implemented. Villegas said CBCP will ask Pope Francis’ blessing for the sin tax when the head of the Roman Catholic Church visits the Philippines next January.