Madam, - The letter from Fionnuala Sheehan, chief executive of MEAS (December 23rd), cannot go unanswered. In it she calls her group, although entirely funded by the drinks industry, independent of the drinks industry. This statement is simply disingenuous.
MEAS is independent of the drinks industry in the way that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were independent of the Bush campaign. In the guise of advocating modest monitoring of current practice in alcohol packaging and promoting drink driving awareness, MEAS is in fact promoting something more insidious and dangerous. It is advocating that there be no change in the current practice of drinks advertising and promotion.
The Department of Health is due to publish a code of practice in the New Year about the regulation of drinks advertising and it is currently planning a whitewash, with no meaningful restrictions on current practices and no legislation to be forthcoming. The drinks industry is facilitating this by using campaigns such as MEAS to say there is no need for regulation of advertising and no need for legislation, because the industry is doing it.
The unhealthy combination of political disinterest plus massive spending by the drinks industry on this campaign is designed to leave the industry alone to promote alcohol with little or no restriction. What this promotion has achieved over the past 10 years is frightening: an increase in alcohol consumption of 41 per cent, making us the worst binge drinkers in Europe and the second highest consumers of alcohol overall; a parallel increase of 45 per cent in the suicide rate during the same period; an alcohol death toll of 1,500 a year; and an overall cost to society of well over €2 billion euro a year.
If there were a group called Mature Enjoyment of Smoking in Society, sponsored by Marlboro, it would not be able to call itself "independent" of the tobacco industry; it would be laughed out of existence for making such a claim.
What is required is very simple, and should be put in place through legislation:
1. A total ban on drinks advertising.
2. A ban on drink sponsorship of any sporting event or youth recreational activity (e.g.concerts).
3. A warning label on every drinks product, as there is on every cigarette packet, e.g. "Drinking kills".
If the Department of Health, under its new goal-oriented Minister, is serious about this dreadful problem, it will not give in to such obvious manipulation. The drinks industry, through its tools, cannot be allowed to succeed in this vital matter of public safety. - Is mise,
Dr CONOR K FARREN, Ph.D, FRCPI, MRCPsych., Chairman, Substance Misuse Faculty, Irish College of Psychiatrists; Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist, St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin 8.