Madam, – Your edition of January 20th reports that Irish teenagers recorded the second highest level of drunkenness in an international comparison, with 29 per cent of 15-year-olds here claiming to have been drunk at least once in the past month.
A separate report in the same edition reveals that almost 40 per cent of people who died suddenly in Cork had tested positive for alcohol and that victims of deaths involving alcohol were younger for most causes of death.
Can anyone be surprised at these appalling statistics? Surely not parents, nor teachers, gardaí, GPs, Accident Emergency personnel, nor anybody else with even a modicum of concern for children and young people. And in case there is any doubt about why we are at the top of several league tables for alcohol consumption and alcohol-related death, illness and injury, let people consider the hundreds of millions of euro spent annually by the drinks industry in producing the cleverest of advertising campaigns and the most pervasive of marketing promotions using sporting and cultural events of all kinds.
There can be little doubt that the sophisticated computer-generated imagery used in current alcohol advertising has an impact on very young children so that by their early teenage years, many Irish young people already drink alcohol.
Meanwhile, the only responses to the crisis are the bleatings of a drinks industry which claims that it is promoting irresponsible drinking while at the same time maximizing its profits at the expense of countless thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds who are directly or indirectly affected by alcohol abuse.
We have report after report on alcohol consumption and its serious consequences but absolutely no action has been taken to tackle the problem at source by curtailing the advertising and promotion of this lethal, widely available drug.
France has acted to limit the exposure of children and young people to alcohol advertising and the results have been positive. What is stopping Ireland from following the French example? – Yours, etc,