We are ignoring appalling effects of alcohol abuse

Your front-page coverage of the Health Research Board’s study of Irish people’s alcohol consumption (June 24) reveals that one-in-three of the population is a harmful drinker, and that 177,000 people are dependent on alcohol.

Three quarters of all alcohol is consumed as binge-drinking and two thirds of people in the 18-24 age group binge drink.

At any stretch of the imagination, these are shocking figures, but we need to remind ourselves that immense physical and mental suffering lies behind these statistics: the daily reality of domestic violence for the spouses and children of those who are dependent on drink; the suffering of the relatives and friends of people killed and injured by drunken attackers; the victims and relatives of drunken-driving, as well as those whose relatives or friends have taken their own lives as a result of alcohol misuse.