Drink driving initiative on the wrong track

MEAS, the organisation set up and funded by the drinks industry, recently launched an initiative on drink driving and managed to persuade the leaders of all political parties to be photographed with their chief executive in its support.

The drinks industry has chosen again to back the one initiative that has been shown to have little or no success.

According to all the international evidence, designated driver schemes are effective only in getting drunken people not to drive but have no effect on the level of alcohol-related accidents.

The research has shown that the most effective ways of reducing the level of drink driving and alcohol-related accidents is to introduce frequent random breath tests and to lower the permitted alcohol levels. The drinks industry is opposed to the lowering of the permitted blood alcohol level.

Instead they succeeded in dazzling us with their PR initiative by proposing an ineffective method of tackling the problem. Organisations such as MEAS have been set up by the drinks industry in different countries to deflect criticism and generate positive publicity without actually doing anything to reduce the overall level of alcohol consumption.

This is because it is not in their economic interests to eliminate negative drinking patterns.

If these organisations were successful in their apparent objectives, they would substantially reduce the profits of their sponsors - the drinks industry.

This is not something they want to achieve. What they want is simply to appear concerned about the harmful effects of alcohol.

MEAS is not a credible body proposing solutions to the problem of drinking and driving because they do not come to this issue from a public health or public safety perspective and should leave the matter to those who do - the appropriate government agencies such as the National Safety Council.

Sinéad Shannon

Policy & Communications Officer

Alcohol Action Ireland

Glen Abbey Centre

Belgard Road

Tallaght

Dublin 24