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.
IRISH PEOPLE ARE are at a high risk of cancer as a result of the amount we drink – with the most recent figures available showing the average drinker aged over 15 consumes over 11 litres of pure alcohol every year.
That’s 700 times the recommended exposure level set by the EU Food Safety Authority to prevent cancer from food and drinks, according to a substance use expert in Dublin for a conference to mark European Week Against Cancer.
Addressing the conference at the Aviva Stadium, Professor Peter Anderson of Newcastle University backed calls for stricter rules on alcohol advertising and sponsorship here.
“The guidelines for alcohol consumption are not strong enough, particularly when considering it is a carcinogenic,” the professor said.
Alcohol advertising helps foster more favourable drinking experiences and promotes social approval for consumption. It will not be possible for Irish society to develop a healthier relationship with alcohol if alcohol continues to be marketed in such an aggressive fashion.
A proposal to ban sponsorship of sporting and cultural events is currently being considered by Cabinet, but as yet there’s been no agreement. Health Minister James Reilly told an Oireachtas Committee last week he was fully in favour of the measure – however Sports and Tourism Minister Leo Varadkar is opposed to it.
The Irish Cancer Society, which is hosting this week’s conference, says such a move is urgently needed.
Head of Communications at the ICS, Kathleen O’Meara told TheJournal.ie that ‘aggressive marketing tactics’ being used by drinks companies were having a huge effect on young people.
From a public health perspective, this needs to be managed and controlled, and that marketing tool needs to be taken away from alcohol companies in a similar way that the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes has deprived tobacco companies of the ability to spread their message.
Representatives of cancer societies from all over Europe are attending the two-day conference at the Dublin 4 venue, as well as officials from the HSE and other state agencies here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Doesnt this completely contradict previous recent articles that alcohol consumption is down by 20-30% in the last 4 years ?
Studies for the sake of studies. hard to know what to believe these days.
“we need more funding for research”
It doesn’t necessarily contradict those studies since it is not referring to an increase or decrease, it merely states the current level of Irish drinking compared to the EU recommended safety level. So if our drinking really has decreased by 30% in the last 4 years it would mean that four years ago we were drinking 1000% or 10 times the EU recommended safety level while now we only drink 700% or 7 times the EU recommended safety level.
I don’t mind admitting to a serious tea problem.
Lately I’ve been slipping sugar into it.
Alcohol consumption may be down in recent years, but it is only down from the peak of a huge increase. It’s a matter of relativity and has to be seen in its true context.
The Fosters and Castlemaine ads are good but that doesn’t mean it would entice me to actually drink that slop
As we speak, there are far too many restrictions on alchohol. We have a great brewing and distilling industry and a pub industry that we are trying to kill. I live in Germany where alchohol is least restricted along with tabacco in the world. It is the education that we need to sort out, we need people educated to drink like the Germans. I have a great analagy, the German wont go to the pub because he knows he has work in the morning. The pub is open 24 hours but he wont go, whereas in Ireland the pub closes at 12am and the publican has to tell the Irish man to go home because he’s got work in the morning. Our attitude needs to change not our laws, the Germans shy away from using laws rather a civic responsibility.
the germans may shy away from booze(or paying for it at least), but their attitude to smoking is disgraceful..they’d ate fags,having lived there the passive smoke used drive me bananas.
They smoke like chimneys all right… You can’t get away from the smoke over here, that’s horrible all right.
yeah i walked into a pub in koln and could barely see the bar due to the smoke, apparently tobacco companies give a lot of funds to the german government, so there ya go.
it would be great though if they could adapt the micro brewery culture more in ireland, serving trad irish dishes.
By this reckoning an average adult is allowed one pint of beer a year !!!!
16 ml of alcohol per anum. Absolute rubbish. Any views from the medical profession on this?
Am I right in calculating thats approx 490 pints a year (@4.5% vol) for everyone over the age of 15 and that the recommended exposure is only 15ml per year?
Don’t know, I’m too drunk to work it out…
I got 30ml per day 11,000/360. Pint of Guinness is 24ml of PURE alcohol, so pint and a half per day. 10.5 pints per week lets say but if we’re 700% over the recommended its a pint and a half per week. Sure you’d take that much alcohol from a few rich desserts.
Which in turn means that 13.5% bottle of wine you bought contain a little over 100ml of pure alcohol…
…So if we are to go with the “Recommended EU Exposure Level” which is working out at approx. 36ml a week, that bottle should last you just over 3 weeks.
Old Chinese saying——-keep cork n mouth .
Stress is bad for our health – why isn’t that banned?
Smoke a joint then
Fact: Advertising has very little or nothing to do with how much we drink.
Nonsense. If advertising had no impact why would companies spend billions on it.
To make their brand the brand of choice. For example, Heineken sponsers a lot of sporting events and music events, that means people will be more likely to by their brand over, say, dutch gold. It doesn’t make people drink more, just tricks them into drinking one brand over another.
Now that you mention it, I did have 700 half-glasses of wine with my dinner last night.
we need more booze!! 700 times, give me a break!
From studies I’ve concluded on my family , friends and work colleagues indicate that our alcohol consumption is down by 95% based on figures for 2007 ~ 2013 ,
Wtf how-come I missing out on all the parties,,
As someone who used to drink alcohol but doesnt anymore ive no problem with people who drink and are responsible in their actions but many Irish people need to realise alcohol is not needed to have a good time!!!
The E.U. Is the new mammy…. Your drinking to much….. Now on the other hand, you haven’t enough to feed your family…. They couldn’t give a sh!t…
With all the taxes etc, who the hell has money to buy a beer!!!! :)
Fact….people will skip trips to doctor, dentist, clothes etc but will still spend money on drink. Red thumb away. We all know it’s true.
Especially since you started your comment with “fact”.
I once started St. Patricks Day with half a bottle of Pernod [at 06.00] Hope this is help to the researchers.
That sh1t cray
Either your sources of your math are frankly dreadful – ; A bottle of wine is ~12% by volume pure alcohol. If it’s 750ml as most of them are, this is 90ml of alcohol. So to drink 11 litres (from wine), you’d be consuming ~122 bottles a year; or about a glass a day, which is hardly that much. Now, if that’s 700 times the “limit”, that means the recommended limit would be… 17% of a bottle of wine, or 131ml (less than a glass of wine a YEAR).
What about beer? Say average decent beer is at 5%; This mean 1 pint contains 28.4ml of alcohol’ to drink 11 litres is then 387 pints, or just over a pint a day, so not that much. NOW if that’s 700x limit (which isn’t referenced by the way… bad science alert!) then that would mean recommended limit is 55% of a pint a year, or 314ml of beer A YEAR.
This does not make a lick of sense, and I’m presuming it’s because someone at the journal can’t run numbers.
Also, *cancer* is a family of diseases, and this doesn’t indicate which , if any, it refers to – I’m guessing stomach and oesphaegal cancers, which are correlated with alcohol, but you’re talking minor relative risk increase, NOT effective risk increase; for example, let’s say activity x is related to disease y. If you don’t do x, you have a 1 in ten million chance of getting disease y. If you DO x, your risk doubles to 2 in ten million; this might be a 100% relative risk increase, but it is certainly still bugger all real risk increase. I’m willing to throw a tenner down the talk with relating to relative and not absolute risk.
What a load of rot. 700 times my Arse. Per head of population we drink less than nearly all of our European neighbours. That comes from the drink industry figures. But we are a lot more likely to drink in at social setting such as going to the pub. Than drinking at home. Although drinking at home is increasing in popularity.
Craft beer sales are thriving at the moment. When was the last time you saw a big marketing campaign from one of these small independent brewers?
i havent seen them advertised and its fantastic to see independent quality brewers thriving..i havent visited any of them but have tried the ale and stout from a few of them, and was well impressed..
i was just saying if the small brewers could expand in to a gastro pub type service serving irish food, it could do quite well.
I work out the recommended exposure level is 15.71 ml per year. One 330ml @ 5% bottle of beer has 16.5ml…so when you have that one bottle empty the end of it and you should be just about ok
and yet a few weeks ago another survey reckons our drinking was down a good bit hmmmmm…….may i suggest we take funding away from these quack studies and put them into studies about the stress of living and paying over the odds for everything in this country, oh yes I forgot then we would be blaming the government and the powers that be and not the big bad drinks industry
I can only apologise.
Due to working in the transport sector 50 – 60 hrs per week mainly night shift i’m only being able to drink on my nights off ( if not too tired) so I’m afraid I have been letting the side down.
If someone would give me a lovely office job working 9-5 mon – Friday, I am sure I would be able to help the country to get that figure over the 1000 times :)
Get a hip-flask?
That figure is outrageous. Let me break it down, 11L of alcohol or 11,000ml a year.
A pint is 568ml, with an average abv of 4.5%, that’s 25.56ml of alcohol per pint roughly.
11,000ml per year so that’s 435.47pints a year or 8.37pints a week.
The figure quoted regarding EU levels of exposure was obviously used for shock factor, if that is in fact the actual recommended figure that would equate to 0.6221 pints a year or 0.0119 pints a week.
I find it hard to believe that people are of the opinion, that alcohol sponsorship of events is the cause of Irish people drinking more than some of our European counterparts. The problem lies with our relation with alcohol across society as a whole. The solution does not lie in banning alcohol companies from advertising or sponsorship but lies with changing our cultural perceptions of alcohol and societal relationships with it. There is no quick fix.
The Irish have been the butt of stupidity jokes for years. It looks like this has rubbed off on these ‘experts’ and they believe they have to prove it to be true. They have even imported ‘experts’ from England to show just how stupid! I’m sure that the average member of the public is not that stupid.
Smokers warned that the agenda against them would be rolled out to demonize other lifestyle choices like alcohol if you allowed them to get away with the lies and misinformation related to the health effects of smoking. Here is the evidence!
Did anyone notice that the rhetoric, exaggerations, absurd statistics that some ‘expert’ worked out on the back of a fag packet and etc are almost a carbon copy of those leveled against smoking;- ‘aggressive marketing tactics’ (by big evil tobacco – sorry meant drinks companies who want to kill you), 700 times more than safe – WOW! ‘Urgent need – !!’ “Huge effect on young people”!!!! (soon to be changed to ‘protect the children’ you uncaring smelly drunks). Are you quaking in your boots yet? No, well what about all that cancer that drinking causes, surely you must be scared now. A mere whiff of a Jack Daniels will kill you dead in seconds you know – riddled with cancer? You are going to dies you foolish people if you so much look at a tequila sunrise!
Yes it is stupid, but some people will lap it up and swallow it like a Bailey”s Irish cream then regurgitate it in a year or two, telling you how their mother died of cancer caused by drinking a half-a-guinness ten years ago – “you must be stupid for drinking that filth smelly evil drink – look what it causes”! (no doubt earning a nice salary in the process – paid for by the public purse)
You were told that if you quit smoking you would not have any health problems in your life, cos all cancers is caused by smokin! You believed it – did you? BUT look, cancers are INCREASING! Smoking has been reducing for half a century but there has been NO improvement in those disease that smoking was claimed to cause and non smokers account for most cancers now.
How would you go about explaining this? Obvious really; blame some other lifestyle choice, like alcohol for instance or specific foods or sitting on your derriere during your rest days off work , but don’t mention airborne pollution caused by all the other wealthy, influential big corporations! You believed it once before, you will believe this too!
Note too the emphasis on can’cer
Listen those bastards in the EU Food Safety Authority have another thing coming if they think I’m going to sit here and suckle at their teets.
It’s one of the “five a day” for those who have being abandoned by this government so Enda could win European of the year. Róisín Shortall was the only one who had any ideas on tackling alcohol consumption. Since white took over we have returned to “sport in Ireland can’t survive without profits from alcohol advertising. As expected when he was appointed he has done what O’Reilly wanted or whatever the drinks industry lobbyist wanted and now their profits have risen 700%. Public health is only considered when another tax increase is needed. To highlight the problem of people making stupid decisions while drunk maybe the Dail bar should close opening a nice fruit bar in its place. Lead by example instead of allowing company profits come before public health.
Who Does these studies no way they are accurate
About time some one mooted the idea of a ban on alcohol ads, but the alcohol industry would never allow such a law to be passed.
a little visit to the district courts and the AE departments in this country would be such a needed wake up call for a lot of you.
Because that’s where the responsible drinkers hang out? Or are those places full of irresponsible reprobates combined with scattering of people with drug and or emotional problems who use booze as a crutch? You should hang out with adults it might open your eyes that the vast vast majority of people can go out, drink and go home without turning into a violent maniac – the only real victim is my wallet.
District courts are a joke… its a gravy train for the free legal aid lawyers. The judges just turn them back onto the streets knowing they will see them next month. Read the courts digest in your local newspaper and I guarantee you the names match up with those on your A and E clipboard. I pity your line of work and the stuff you have to put up with… but spare us responsible drinkers of your disdain and instead look at the bigger picture. Your attitude plays right into the hands of the Government who want to raise alcohol taxes… why should the 95+% of us pay for the actions of the few?
Did someone get paid to come up with that study?
Did a bit of digging on this after reading this earlier and came across the amphora project which may the source of information for this article.
Comparison of alcohol comsumption to EU safety limits for carcinogens and toxic substances.
http://amphoraproject.net/w2box/data/Fact%20Sheets/8-Ethanol%20is%20the%20problem%20toxin%20in%20drink.pdf
Full study on alcohol consumption throughtout the EU:
http://amphoraproject.net/w2box/data/e-book/AMPHORA%20ebook.pdf
Good work Darren. That study states that people shouldn’t drink any more than two drinks per year.
Jail the lot of them , oh sorry I thought this was a weed article , my bad pour us another double there would ya tommy .
how much longer do we after read this shite from so called expert’s , I say keep your opinion’s to yourselves and let one think for one self instead of treating one has stupid
I’d say i drank that alone in the past week out in gran canaria and i’m fine..still a bit rough but not too bad
They will take the guinness sign down from st james gate. We must be turning all those tourists into raging alcoholics
Suspicious how the supposed average amount of alcohol coincides with the magical 21 units of alcohol per week.
Terrifying statistics indeed. I need a drink…
Why isn’t there research done on how much drink is bought on the weekend against during the week no that would mean they would lose their arguments about putting the cost of drink up if they wanted to make an example to people why not get rid of the dail bar hypocrisy much . If there talking about stopping young people drinking why not put the age up to twenty one it’s a lot easier to tell someone that is under twenty one than eighteen and I think someone over twenty one would be a lot more responsible and would not go and buy drink in off licenses for under age
And enjoying every drop of it.
have your say