Higher drink prices, more restricted pub opening hours and rigid enforcement of drink driving laws must be part of any serious plan to tackle Ireland's excessive drinking problem, the Government was told yesterday.
"Unusual political courage and leadership" and a unified Government approach were required, Dr Shane Butler of the Addiction Research Centre at Trinity College, Dublin, said.
Dr Butler said alcohol education initiatives aimed at young people are not working and won't succeed while the rest of society exhibits high tolerance of alcohol and there are two competing Government policies towards it.
In a hard-hitting address to the centre's annual conference, which debated public policies on drugs and alcohol, Dr Butler said Ireland is not culturally sympathetic to policies which appear to be based upon "fundamentalist" opposition to alcohol.
He urged that, instead of waiting for societal attitudes to change, the Government should lead the way. The public interest would be best served by regulation and control rather than by "rampant competition and consumer sovereignty", he argued.
Structures should be put in place for an integrated policy towards drink and the most straightforward way might be to add alcohol to the policy brief of the National Drug Strategy team.
The media should also be used to "hammer home clearly and regularly the connection between levels or patterns of consumption and the prevalence of drink-related problems here".
Dr Butler cited the tax on plastic bags and traffic control measures in Dublin as examples of how a problem might be effectively tackled head on. He was concerned the Department of Health was advocating a policy aimed at reducing alcohol-related damage while the rest of Government appeared to favour a policy driven by liberalising the sale of drinks.
He said the Commission on Liquor Licensing "naively" addressed social and health concerns with the implication that drink problems are largely confined to young people.
Dr Butler said he was also very concerned that the commission was keeping under review the option of selling alcohol in garage forecourts.
