Madam, - Your recent reports of Diageo's investment of €1.5 million in a UCD research study into hazardous drinking among young people raise two important questions. Firstly, is it not more than a little odd that research into the harmful effects of a particular product should be carried out by a manufacturer of that product? Secondly, is there no longer funding available from public sources for such research?
The answer to the first question lies in the drinks industry's promotion of "corporate social responsibility" as a means of fending off controls on the sale and marketing of its products. This tactic has been developed globally in recent years and is used, not only by the drinks industry, but also by purveyors of other socially dubious products, such as junk foods.
The mantra of this movement is "enlightened self-interest", a phrase repeated ad nauseam by industry spokespersons every time they wish to express their "concern" at the spiralling levels of alcohol-related illnesses, violence and road accidents. Inevitably, we hear the same phrase when any announcement is made of a drink industry initiative designed to tackle alcohol abuse. This was indeed the case last week when Diageo brought its global chief executive to Ireland to proclaim the good news of research funding for the UCD study.
This brings us to the second question: why is no funding into alcohol abuse forthcoming from public sources? Two decades ago and more, we had publicly-funded anti-alcohol health promotion campaigns. We now have a situation where the hard-hitting anti-drink campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s have been replaced by anaemic campaigns funded by the drinks industry itself.
There is no reason why funding for research into alcohol abuse among younger people could not have been provided by the Health Research Board. The Government's reluctance to provide public funds for such research cannot be explained by a desire for fiscal rectitude - €1.5 million would represent a tiny proportion of total health expenditure, not to mention a fraction of the many billions that alcohol abuse costs our society annually in terms of alcoholism, accidents and anti-social behaviour.
The fact that the Government seems to have abdicated its responsibilities in the spheres of health promotion and research into the underlying causes of alcohol abuse is ample evidence that the drinks industry's use of "corporate social responsibility" approaches are being extremely successful in the Irish context.
It is clear that drinks manufacturers have been given free rein and the Government has become entirely passive when it comes to taking any measures that would curb their power. - Yours, etc,
Dr MICHAEL LOFTUS, Crossmolina, Co Mayo.