Education is the best way to end Ireland’s culture of alcohol abuse
Advertising restrictions and pricing policy have an important part to play in tackling problem drinking. However, we are dealing with a mood altering drug where the precise impact of these two measures can be exaggerated.
Strategised, long-term educational planning appears to be missing. We will never really and successfully tackle the scourge of problem drinking until the following holistic steps are included in any new statuary process. These cost effective steps will allow each citizen to accurately access the relationship with alcohol at local and personal level. Such awareness will, over time, change our so-called “cultural” attachment to alcohol.
There is a glaring need for the following:
· A fully informed, consistent educational intervention campaign which defines the issue of problem drinking. The suggested definition is as follows: “Problem drinking is a pattern of drinking in which a person has lost control over their drinking so that it is interfering, on a continual basis, with some vital area of their life such as family, friends, job, school, health or other such area important for them.” (Alcoholrsponse.com). Such a definition would need to be prominently displayed in any premises dealing in alcohol and all health and law services points of contact.
· The provision of direct intervention measures for both alcohol user and concerned persons at every available opportunity. This would need to become a priority for the Health and Justice
services.
· The pro-active affirmation of those in our society choosing not to take alcohol for personal or health reasons.
· The pro-active affirmation of those in our society choosing to take alcohol on a low-volume basis.
· The provision of a substantial fund by the producers, promoters and providers of alcohol to help deal with the negative side-effects of their product through education and treatment.
It is heart-breaking to see this problem get even worse year on year despite hundreds of millions spent on ineffective quangos and half-baked educational programmes. While this Bill is being prepared there is ample opportunity to debate and include the above suggestions. One hardly needs the proverbial “rocket-science” degree to understand how effective they could be.
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