Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE FAILURE OF successive governments to develop a National Alcohol Policy has had a “devastating” impact on Irish society in general and family life in particular according to Public Health Specialist, Dr Declan Bedford.
Bedford was speaking at the annual Irish Medical Organisation Doolin Lecture in the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, yesterday.
In his lecture he said that Ireland has become a nation of binge drinkers with a dangerous ambivalence towards alcohol and the damage it inflicts on lives across the community.
He said a strong indication of this was the fact that “there are more places where you can buy drink in Ireland than there are shops where you can buy fruit, vegetables or milk”.
Bedford said the statistics around alcohol in Ireland were staggering:
- The average Irish adult who drinks consume the equivalent of a bottle of vodka a week.
- Every seven hours someone dies from an alcohol-related illness.
- Irish people are now the biggest binge drinkers in Europe and only three in every ten Irish adults on a normal drinking occasion have two drinks or less.
- Research has shown that one in four adults binge drink every week, Bedford said. (Binge drinking is defined as more than five drinks in a single session.)
Under-aged drinking
The health specialist said Ireland’s alcohol problem is not just confined to adults with a European study indicating that half of our 15-16-year-olds have drunk alcohol in the psat month. A quarter have been drunk at some stage in the past month and in the case of Irish girls they drank 44 per cent more alcohol in their last “session” than their European peers.
“Children have told us that they find it easy to get alcohol and this is confirmed that one in four mid-teenagers bought alcohol in off-sales outlets and one in three consumed alcohol in a bar or disco in the past 30 days.”
“Alcohol needs to be less available and more strictly controlled to protect our children from the harms of alcohol,” Bedford said.
Bedford said the impact on family live in terms of relationships, disruption to home and work life might not be easily calculated but said we do know that alcohol is a factor in half of the suicides in Ireland.
He said alcohol abuse also imposes enormous burdens on the health services with an estimated one in every eight people attending at a Emergency Department unit there as a result of alcohol.
“In pure financial terms alcohol related harm in Ireland costs the economy €3.7 billion,” he said.
“Averaged out over all alcohol consumed in Ireland, this means that on average that each standard unit of alcohol consumed causes 85 cent worth of harm.”
“We need a national strategy that should include minimum pricing in Ireland to control the sales of alcohol at discount prices in supermarkets and other off licences,” he added. “The minimum price should cover at least the cost of the harm.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Why is it always a “joint” operation…. ? Could they not just say combined ?
@Aurelio Na Fodhla: Only when it’s not about cannabis
@Aurelio Na Fodhla: I always have a wee smile when they use the phrase “joint operation”. I remember a headline from one of the evening papers years ago that read, “Firefighters stoned in Dolphins Barn”. At least they weren’t drunk !
Just think of the tax revenue if it was legal and controlled in the same manner as alcohol & cigarettes. Added benefit of not having to deploy gards & customs agents wasting time over something they cannot eradicate. If the found €2million worth you can be sure there is €200million they didn’t find.
Senseless comment, the majority of people who consume cannabis (or alcohol) are not addicts and enjoy their lives just as much as anyone else. End the stigma please.
Only here for the comments – Bonus
Points will be awarded for originality.
Hash heads pxxs heads whatever else.
Can Irish people go for a swim.
Just enjoy life without adicitions
@The Grand Nagus: hash heads? Nice 1970′s terminology there.
@JustBEERbarry: Sneer all you like, Those hash heads wreaked havoc in the 70’s! YOU WEREN’T THERE MAN
@JustBEERbarry:
Whatever you want to call it its addiction.
I lived with stoners years ago.
Terrible experience.
Paranoid bunch.
@The Grand Nagus: Not as bad as a house of drinkers. Nothing worse!
@Tomo:
True but it all addiction
We have a lovely country..
Go out and enjoy it
Its ten times better without been pxxs
Or stonned
@Alan Biddulph: if you remember it you weren’t there either man!!
@The Grand Nagus: Tell that to the thousands of people who glorify coffee addiction. Caffeine is a lot less healthy than a joint at night!
@Tomo:
Ahh the denial.
OK don’t drink coffee also.
@The Grand Nagus: swim away but just cause people have a pint or a joint doesn’t make em junk!es or pi55 heads. Judgy Judgy like……
@The Grand Nagus: so says the bloke with an addiction to talk absolute ball ox.
@The Grand Nagus: so tell us, were you always this judgemental?
@Tomo: Total nonsense
@Christopher Byrne: what’s nonsense? The part about the house full of drinkers? Or caffeine being an addiction? Or caffeine being more harmful than cannabis? I’m sure you have a watertight arguement.
@The Grand Nagus: sounds like you’re addicted to the oul swimming there. Probably a water-head. Dihydrogen monoxide addiction is a serious issue but the guards are afraid of taking on Big Uisce. I’d say you couldn’t go more than a few days without a hit of H2O or the withdrawals would be the end of you. And you’d probably say you’re just a recreational user. But really it’s all addiction.
@Mac Muinteoir: you’re right, if it’s sea swimming this individual is engaging in its 100% addictive.
I know several daily swimmers and they tell me its an addiction, a buzz.
Funnily enough all these seaswimmers I know also like a pint and/or a smoke too. Huh, weird. Or maybe he likes to refer to it as something else not quite as judgemental as an addiction/buzz.
€2 million for that amount is ridiculous. Do they actually just make up a random figure they think will sound good?
@D: it’s priced per ten spot
@D: No “quarter” given when announcing big busts it seems!
Following the who what where when and how model of journalism I found this article lacking in substance. The lack of detail was astonishing. No Garda or official was named. The place where the drugs were discovered was anonymised. There was no sense that anyone was identified as owning the drugs and so would be liable for prosecution. That might have made a difference to their ongoing illegal activity. It’s like a press release from the Revenue was elevated into an article without ever passing through the interrogation of a journalist’s brain to examine the significance of the information as news.
@feargal ‘2 metres’ de cantuin: covering an informers tracks methinks
Good that they’re finally breaking ground on the drugs that we see destroying lives on a daily bases, by that I mean Heroin, don’t see the same arguments from the usual ‘heads’ on those articles, mostly because they’re really only interested IN the argument, and twisting the screw on those it does matter too. Stay classy ya’ll
have your say