Irish Examiner view: We need to stand up to the alcohol industry

The alcohol industry should have no role in influencing attitudes among people who are too young to drink.

From time to time one sees online reproductions of old — very old — tobacco advertisements in which smiling, white-coated doctors recommend particular brands of cigarette as being less irritating than their competitors.

It’s easy now to smirk at the gullible public that swallowed those ads, but perhaps we should look around, because it is clear that dissonant coalitions aren’t just a matter of ancient history.

The presence of the alcohol industry in our schools, as revealed by Jess Casey in these pages during the week, offers a glimpse of our society which is unedifying, to say the least.

The immediate reaction needs to be stated unambiguously — the alcohol industry should have no role in influencing attitudes among those who, by definition, are too young to drink. As an example of a vested interest this could hardly be bettered, given the alcohol industry’s existential motivation in having new customers coming on line every year.

It is worth adding, however, that the fact that the alcohol industry is able to play a role in shaping the attitudes of young people to drink is in keeping with the tenor of the times.

At every level of public discourse, we see contradiction and hypocrisy, so it should hardly surprise us that an industry producing goods which cause huge misery and suffering in our society can be facilitated in accessing a vast pool of potential customers.

The good news is that this has been recognised, with both the Department of Education and the HSE confirming to this newspaper that they advise schools against getting involved with alcohol-funded initiatives.

It would be better news if those organisations — neither of them reticent about flexing their muscles in other contexts — were to deploy stronger language than ‘advising’.

‘Forbidding’ would serve all concerned better in the short and the long term.