Last Thursday, Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney announced that "strict voluntary codes of practice" had been drawn up "to address departmental concerns in relation to alcohol advertising and young people", writes Fintan O'Toole
A key section of the Tánaiste's new code for cinema adverts reads as follows:
The cinema industry will not accept alcohol advertising from strength alcohol brands.
Advertising from non-strength alcohol brands to account for no more than 40 per cent of total advertising minutage.
Alcohol advertising will only be shown with films targeting an adult audience and where it is deemed that at least 75 per cent of the attendances will be aged 18 or over.
Every commercial exhibited on cinema screens must be processed through the Cinema Advertising Association (CAA). The CAA is an independent committee of appointed experts from a variety of ages and backgrounds. An impartial and independent consultant with 19 year's (sic) experience advises and oversees all decisions reached by the CAA.
The CAA strictly abides by the Code of Advertising Standards of Ireland.
Here's the interesting bit. Looking at documents obtained by the National Youth Federation, I was suddenly overcome by a sense of déjà vu. On June 10th 2003, Eithne Billington, general manager of Carlton Screen Advertising, the largest agency for alcohol ads in Irish cinemas, wrote to the then minister for health, Micheál Martin. She was, she said, worried about "quotations from the Taoiseach stating that legislation to restrict alcohol advertising on cinema films with an 18 certificate is imminent". Ms Billington was writing to the minister to argue that a ban was unnecessary because of the voluntary code that her company operated. In her letter, she summarises that code.
Her summary begins "Carlton Screen Advertising does not accept alcohol advertising from strength advertising brands". It proceeds, practically word for word, with the text published last week by Mary Harney .
The only changes are the substitution of "the cinema industry" for "Carlton Screen Advertising" and the omission of a few details. The extent to which a lobbying letter from the industry has simply been duplicated as Government policy is evident from the fact the Tánaiste's code of practice reproduces word-for-word the sentence "An impartial and independent consultant with 19 year's (sic) experience advises and oversees all decisions reached by the CAA" from Ms Billington's letter. The grammatical error "19 year's experience" is duplicated. No one even bothered to notice that if someone had 19 years experience in 2003, he or she must have 21 years experience now.
So here's what's happened: a strong Government commitment to legislate for controls on alcohol ads has been scrapped and replaced by a strong Government commitment to giving the vested interests exactly what they want. What were presented to the public as "Voluntary Codes of Practice agreed between the Department of Health and Children and representatives of the advertising, drinks and media communications industries" are nothing of the kind. They are a complete capitulation by the State to the demands of those industries.
In May 2003, Bertie Ahern announced that there would be a ban on alcohol advertising on television and radio before 10pm, on public transport and in cinemas where films for people under 18 are being shown. By February 2004, TV3, in a submission, stated that "TV3 understands that it is the department's intention to have an enabling act in law by the third quarter of this year".
In September 2004, the second report of the Government's Strategic Task Force on Alcohol stated: "The Minister for Health and Children received Government approval for the drafting of the Alcohol Products Bill ... which will restrict where alcohol advertisements can be placed, limit content, ban drinks industry sponsorship of youth leisure activities and require a health warning on alcohol advertise- ments. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel is currently working on drafting the Bill." The taskforce called on the Government to "ensure the proposed legislation to reduce the exposure of children to alcohol advertising, sponsorship and promotions is enacted without delay".
The public agreed - 66 per cent of people surveyed for the taskforce's report wanted controls on alcohol ads. All the experts in the field, who are trying to get to grips with the massive personal, domestic, criminal, social and economic damage done by our national alcoholism agreed. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Health agreed. But drinks companies, advertising agencies and media organisations thought they might lose money and mounted a concerted lobbying campaign. Given a conflict between the public interest and some private commercial interests, the Government threw in the towel. Drinks advertising will now be subject to a voluntary code written, in effect, by the very industries it is supposed to control. Let us toast democracy with a dozen alcopops .