Department ‘aids drinks industry in targeting children’

PSYCHIATRISTS have accused the Department of Health and Children of “facilitating” the drinks industry in targeting advertising at children.

Publishing a paper calling for a ban on alcohol advertising, the Irish College of Psychiatrists (ICP) criticised Health Minister Mary Harney of having a “pro industry” bias on alcohol.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me that the Department of Health and Children is facilitating the drinks industry in their efforts to target advertising at children,” said consultant psychiatrist Dr Bobby Smyth.

“I think it’s the desire to facilitate industry and business, and regulation is obviously the enemy of entrepreneurship and certainly the minister at the helm of the Department of Health would be very pro-industry, but I think she’s got the balance wrong on this particular issue.”

Dr Smyth is the lead author of a paper, Calling Time on Alcohol Advertising and Sponsorship in Ireland, published by the ICP.

He said: “the country with probably the biggest alcohol problem in the western world” has “no one leading our development of alcohol policy. It should be a cause of concern”.

He said research by the Office on Tobacco Control revealed that 16 and 17-year-olds spent €21 per week on alcohol.

“This translates as a total annual spend by Irish adolescents of €145 million. This illegal alcohol market is therefore larger in size than the total illegal market in Ireland for drugs such as heroin, estimated to be €60 to €70m.”

Dr Smyth said European research found Irish 15 to 16 year-olds had the highest rates of drunkenness, with a 25% getting drunk every week.

He said the drinks industry spent 70m in 2007 on advertising and described the Alcohol Marketing Monitoring Body, set up by the Department of Health, as “window dressing” as it was dominated by the drinks industry, advertisers and broadcasters and was essentially self-regulation.

He said all efforts and strategies on alcohol have always involved the drinks industry. He said drug dealers did not sit on the table in the National Drugs Strategy.

Co-author Dr Eamon Keenan said there had been “minimal funding” to alcohol services over the last 10 years and that alcohol services lagged far behind drug services.

Dr Keenan said the ICP had argued for alcohol to join drugs in one addiction strategy.

irishpsychiatry.ie