Terry Prone: Drinkaware may have had good intentions, but this was so wrong

‘Giving teenagers information about the harm done by excessive drinking is, on the face of it, a good thing. The problem is the sponsorship.’

Done but not dusted. That’s how you might describe the Drinkaware situation.

This paper led on Saturday with a warning letter going from the government to schools telling them that materials and courses sponsored by the alcohol industry should not be used in their classrooms.

According to Liz Dunphy and Jessica Casey, who wrote that lead, the letter that went from Department of Education and HSE bluntly stated “there is no place for the alcohol industry in schools”. Meaning that the training courses for teachers and the materials supporting these courses, provided by the national charity Drinkaware, are severely non grata as of this week-end.

“It is not appropriate to use resources or materials produced or funded by the alcohol industry for education and awareness in schools, or for teachers to attend, in their professional capacity, associated training which may be offered by organisations funded by the alcohol industry.”

The phrasing of the letter is significant. It is unusually comprehensive, hitting not only the issue of who pays but also who produces materials designed for use by/in school. In addition, as the quotation above makes clear, it’s quite legalistic, defining as no longer appropriate that teachers in their professional capacity, would attend “training which may be offered by organisations funded by the alcohol industry”.

If it ever was appropriate: The letter refers back to earlier official advice along the same lines. Message: “We told you this before. But in case you missed it…”

An organisation named the Alcohol Forum must take some of the credit for this firming up of previous disregarded policy. But so can this paper, whose Jess Casey has been to the fore in drawing attention to the intrinsic contradiction in an industry legitimately committed to selling more of its product sponsoring a charity committed to persuading teenagers to postpone consumption of that same product.

The Irish Examiner didn’t quite run a campaign on this, but the paper, nonetheless, was key to moving Alcohol Forum’s concerns onto — literally — the front pages.

This led to an unusual encounter last week between Drinkaware CEO Sheena Horgan and Alcohol Forum spokeswoman Paula Leonard on Morning Ireland — unusual, because although the two women were to-the-death opposed to each other’s stance, the level of courteous restraint evident in the item was spectacular, if courteous restraint can ever be so described.

They were like two surgeons operating at different ends of the same body while not letting on they were even in the same operating theatre. 

They never called each other out for cynicism or self-righteousness. Neither negatively characterised the other. The Drink-aware speaker studiously avoided even acknowledging that the Alcohol Forum’s objective was the amputation of the Drinkaware leg in schools. Indeed, she reiterated several times that Drinkaware was ready to “scale up” its offering. She kept stressing that the materials used were objective. And Morning Ireland presenter Gavin Jennings kept stressing — with dangerous quietude — that those materials were sponsored by the drinks industry.

A few days later, the powers-that-be came down heavily on the side of the Alcohol Forum, issuing a letter to schools that left no possibility of misinterpretation.

It would seem consequentially obvious that Drinkaware is unlikely to be able to fulfill its scaling-up ambitions. Any teacher who missed the story who tells their principal they’d like to attend a Drinkaware course is likely to find the room temperature dropping as precipitously as the national temperature fell before the weekend. If they persist, they’re likely to be told that what they do in their own time is their business, but that the school will not be hosting any courses based on their teachers attending the Drinkaware course. In the unlikely event of a school deciding to a) send teachers to Drink-aware courses and b) offering classes as a result, that school and those teachers are going to find that the hydra of Greek mythology has nothing on a parental WhatsApp group when it comes to growing heads and biting you in bad places.

Added together, all of these inevitabilities mean that Drinkaware is likely to go into operational decline as drink industry sponsors look at what may once have looked like a winning proposition and decide to put their corporate social responsibility funds someplace else.

Now, I have written pretty harshly about Drinkaware in this paper. Triumphalism over its undoubtedly impending demise, however, would be inappropriate. It’s doubtful that the industry ever saw the charity as a way of doing anything other than making some contribution to the public understanding of alcohol. It’s certain that it was set up and run so that it met the requirements of the Charities Regulator. And it employed and continues to employ highly qualified professionals and has had Maynooth University cast an eye over what it does.

None of that is the issue. The issue is the link between an industry flogging different versions of the same product and sponsoring anything related to that product in schools. The association is unacceptable, no matter how many Chinese walls are constructed around it and no matter how valid the health education principles manifest in their programs.

Assuming the best of the alcohol industry, they will now re-group, decide that even if it seemed like a great idea at the point of inception, it no longer stands up, and wind it down in a generous and responsible way.

The people, many of them women, who have run it have done so in a pristine way and should be helped to emerge positively from this point in their careers.

Drinkaware’s intention to postpone the moment when a kid starts drinking is, on the face of it, a good thing. Giving teenagers information about the harm done by excessive drinking is also, on the face of it, a good thing. The problem is the sponsorship. We are living way too sponsored a life, with big companies and their charitable offspring effectively dictating the direction and standards of supplicants seeking money from them for good causes.

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Precious few good causes get anywhere today without corporate sponsorship and corporate sponsors, while they may make a public virtue out of not interfering in the sponsored entity, know that — as American marketing journalist Leslie Savan says — “Over the long run, whether you buy a particular product is less important than that you buy the world that makes the product seem desirable.”

Sponsorship of anything — it doesn’t have to be alcohol — going into schools contributes to making the sponsor and what they offer seem more desirable. Back in antiquity, the school I attended had beautiful wall hangings about wildlife sponsored by an oil company. From today’s point of view, that seems outrageous in its association of an environmentally challenging industry with pure, untouched nature.

The good intentions that created Drinkaware should now be channeled into a graceful leaving of our classrooms. And wider school-directed sponsorship subject to newly rigorous rules.