TOPIC:

I don't actually think that advertising is at all to blame for the misuse of alcohol. Similar adverts are shown in countries with a far better track record. It's a culture and it has been there for generations.

People look at the per capita consumption in 1960 and how much larger it is today and conclude that the average person is drinking a lot more, but I don't think that is the case. In 1960, most women were either abstainers, or very occasional drinkers (Christmas, weddings, etc.). My contention is that much of the rise in per capita consumption since 1960 is due to Irish women taking on the drinking culture Irish men already had.

I think there are two kinds of alcohol related harm and they need to be handled in different ways. There is acute harm, where people get drunk and harm themselves or others, or simply make a nuisance of themselves and there is chronic harm, where people drink too much on a regular basis and end up with an alcohol related illness.

The first is caused by drunkenness. This is binge drinking. It is not defined by a certain number of units in a sitting, it is characterised by drinking until you are out of control. The second may be caused by the first, or a less dramatic heavy drinking over many years.

Acute alcohol related harm happens because it is considered acceptable in our society to drink until you are out of control. The only way to reduce this significantly and long term is to change the culture. Social pressure is very powerful. If your friends laugh and accept you being drunk, or spend their weekends in pursuit of drunkenness, then it is ok, even encouraged, for you to do it. If your peers disprove and are embarrassed by your drunken antics you will learn to control your intake fairly sharpish.

If you have any suggestions on how to achieve this cultural change I would genuinely welcome your input. I think it can be done. The attitude to drink driving has changed in a remarkably short time and I find that encouraging.

There are many reasons for chronic alcohol related harm and I think the only way a civilised society should deal with it is by offering help if it is wanted, but also accepting that freedom means the right to make self destructive choices too.

Well said. But how do you get the government to make the clever choice when they can do something easy(and stupid and counterproductive.....)

one simple statement to cure acute problems with alcohol


Tell every child in the state that any fool can drink it , it takes a proper man/woman to hold it .Explain that maturity is not in the act of drinking , but in the attitude of drinking .


This very simply explains to everyone that that drunkeness is you own responsibility . No two ways about it .


You are 100% correct in the rise of consumption figures being skewed by the uptake of the " previously Untouched market " of females who in the auld good catholic days never drank or never drank as much as their menfolk . It's amazing to me how a state can pick and choose it's stats in order to promulgate it's own agenda And not just in Beer either ...

If the government were serious about tackling the problem they could donate every cent of the extra revenue to Al Anon or Aiséirí or some other group that helps deal with the problem without taking any admin or other charges. Just look at the extra revenue generated from alcohol sales at the end of the year and donate that amount.
It would not solve the problem but would show their Bona Fides and rechannel the money to those who are being most affected by alcohol abuse.

"sbillings":2sqhp9n2 wrote: If you have any suggestions on how to achieve this cultural change I would genuinely welcome your input. I think it can be done. The attitude to drink driving has changed in a remarkably short time and I find that encouraging.[/quote:2sqhp9n2]

A good start would be an education programme in schools. It could start in the science classes and cover the effects of alcohol on your body including what happens to your liver if you drink heavily regularly and don't give your liver a chance to recover. It would explain that alcohol is poisonous in large doses and can only be safely consumed in moderation (N.B. EVERYTHING is poisonous in sufficient doses, even water. Alcohol needs less volume to kill you, but that doesn't mean there isn't a safe level). The programme could also cover the harms of binge drinking in Scandinavia, the UK and Ireland and the benefits of the more sensible drinking patterns of the Mediterraneans. They should change the law to allow drinking at home with one's parents and drinking in properly supervised occasions at school (with teachers 'in loco parentis'). That would give teenagers the chance to learn their limits in a safe environment. They could be taught to think about the taste of what they're drinking and pay attention to quality not quantity. If such a programme ran for 15 years it would make a huge difference to the drinking culture. The lager louts now would have softened up by the end of fifteen years, and the people who otherwise will be the louts of the future will have had their attitudes to alcohol changed. Young people are pretty good at learning new things and are open to having the way they think about social issues changed (the already mentioned example of drinking and driving being a case in point). So there's a good chance of a programme like this successfully changing people's behaviour.

I understand why the government insists that these tactics work. They have to. The alternative is to admit that every government since the foundation of the state has been following a failed alcohol policy. Not only that, but they would have to give up the handy sin tax option when they need extra cash (like now).

You see there is an addiction in this country that no one is talking about. It is our government's addiction to sin taxes. Alcohol is worth about a billion Euro a year in direct taxation, cigarettes about 1.3 billion. They are reliant on that money, just as every country that has started down the road of sin taxation is.

Who I understand less is the anti alcohol pressure groups insisting that this stuff works. Either they have been duped by agenda driven reporting and have failed to look at the data for themselves, or they don't actually want to reduce alcohol related harm, they want to punish people for drinking.

The people I understand least is the medical community. They are scientific by nature but because of their medical expertise they are focused on the medical harm suffered by alcohol abuse. This is fine. That is the area in which they are expert. But they then make recommendations to government that prices should be increased, etc. apparently without noticing that they have strayed outside medicine into socio-economics. I can only conclude that they are simply taking the recommendations of government reports without looking at the data themselves and simply parroting those recommendations.

If they actually looked at the sales/consumption/harm data for Ireland since 1960 and assessed the effectiveness of taxation as a method of controlling the behaviour they could not come to the conclusion that it is effective.

I would like to ask them to asses alcohol related harm as a disease and look at taxation as a treatment. If the treatment has been administered for this long, in increasing doses and the symptoms keep getting worse, can the treatment be said to be effective?