So Emirates, a highly-visible government-owned company, willfully violates the black-letter law of the UAE every day? There is no logic to this. I can only surmise that Emirates (and every other hospitality provider in the country) has a wink-and-nod agreement with the government not to enforce the law, and/or the law on drinking is not actually that explicit and/or there is really no rule of law anyway -- which leads to the conclusion that there is essentially no such prohibition for any practical purpose.

They can trot out the "drinking illegally" as a pretext to pile on when someone commits a more legitimate offence, which seems to be the case every time we hear about this supposed law being broken. But has anyone ever been charged with "drinking illegally" absent more serious aggravating circumstances?