Underage drinking - Lack of will to deal with drink issue

THE image of young people inebriated after parades around the country on St Patrick’s Day has tended to mar the festivities to the point where people question the manner in which the feast day is celebrated.

Such behaviour is not just unsightly; it is dangerous and it has the capacity to create real problems for the future.

Politicians denounce underage drinking, but they have done little to stop it. Almost seven years ago the Minister for Justice was given power to introduce regulations to provide for the traceability of take-away alcohol sold in off-licences, supermarkets, or pubs.

The Oireachtas included a provision in the Intoxicating Liquor Act of 2002 whereby the minister could require that a label with the name and address of the premises where intoxicating liquor is purchased be affix to any container in which it is sold for consumption off the premises.

The Justice Minister at the time, John O’Donoghue, had promised zero tolerance, but what we witnessed was more like zero action. The provision was re-enacted in a somewhat different form in the Intoxicating Liquor Act of 2003 by Michael McDowell as Minister for Justice, but he failed to act because of practical difficulties in devising an appropriate labelling scheme.

Labour Leader Pat Rabbitte was probably right when he concluded that those practical difficulties probably had more to do with a lack of political will.

Peer pressure on young people to drink alcohol has been growing.

The glamourising of drink in sophisticated advertisements has undoubtedly been a contributory factor, in the same way that cigarette smoking was glamorised for an earlier generation, who were deliberately targeted for the long-term commercial dividend in winning them over to a particular product as young as possible.

An estimated 90% of people now begin drinking as teenagers, as opposed to a very small number a few decades ago.

Young people appear to have little difficulty acquiring alcohol. The gardaí were promising to keep a vigil outside off-licences to curb underage drinking, but that is unlikely to be enough.

In many instances adults purchase the alcohol for the minors. It is not enough to say that this is a crime; measures should be implemented to make it easier to trace and convict those people.

If the place of purchase of the alcohol were clearly labelled, it should be possible to trace where it was sold when found in the possession of minors. Where this happens the proprietor should be required to take extra measures to ensure the traceability of his sales.

With modern technology this should be easy, if there were the political will to ensure that the proprietor had the proper incentive to do so.

Adults who purchase drink for, or sell drink to young people should be held responsible for their dangerous and reckless conduct, which can have disastrous consequence both in the short term and the long term. Society ought to regard such irresponsible behaviour as every bit as obnoxious as the behaviour of drug dealers and paedophiles.