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.

Yet, despite the harmful effects of alcohol on so many people across the age spectrum, in homes and communities the length and breadth of the country, our government takes a largely hands-off approach in allowing the drinks industry to promote its products with little or no regulation.

It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that alcohol marketing, including sports sponsorship, encourages children and young people to drink at an earlier age, and in greater quantities than they otherwise would (Alcohol Action Ireland).

As a society, we can now safely condemn the mistreatment of the youngest and most vulnerable in past generations.

But while our lawmakers are falling over themselves to be seen to be righting the wrongs of the past, they seem to be indifferent to the appalling exploitation of the young of our own time, by people who use most sophisticated and insidious forms of marketing and promotion for the sole purpose of making vast profits.

Dr Michael J. Loftus

Main Street

Crossmolina

Co Mayo