Binge drinking solution

ART6

Junior minister Roisin Shortall has come up with radical plans to curb binge drinking. These plans include such innovations as banning alcohol ads, making anyone who logs into an Internet site promoting alcohol state that they are over eighteen, banning sports sponsorship by brewers etc., minimum pricing, health labels on drink bottles -- and on and on....Once again a government minister (why do we have so many of them?) wanting to punish everyone because they don't seem to understand how to enforce the laws we already have.

Personally I favour a simpler solution: Get rid of Roisin Shortall. That woman would drive anyone to drink:eek:

SBWife

Encouraging the enforcement of existing laws is so dull compared to grandstanding in the Dail.

Brokentime

How about extending opening hours, lowering prices, and and making it legal to drink in public.

Works where I am

BaronVon

ART6 wrote: »

Personally I favour a simpler solution: Get rid of Roisin Shortall. That woman would drive anyone to drink:eek:

Best comment I've seen posted in a long time......

ADonoghue

The Shower we have running the Country ( England ) would drive you to drink , my solution to avoid a hangover " stay drunk "

Frynge

ADonoghue wrote: »

The Shower we have running the Country ( England ) would drive you to drink , my solution to avoid a hangover " stay drunk "

Tried that today, failed, miserably.

juan.kerr

Brokentime wrote: »

How about extending opening hours, lowering prices, and and making it legal to drink in public.

Works where I am

Is it not a pretty much accepted fact that the Irish are the problem?

ART6

juan.kerr wrote: »

Is it not a pretty much accepted fact that the Irish are the problem?

That's the commonly accepted statement of course. We are all a nation of drunks. So let's kick the s**t out of everyone who lives in this country and who like to take a drink. Alternatively let's ask, out of a population of 4.5 millions, and (say) 30% are adults or some 1.5 millions, are actually binge drinkers? I simply don't believe that 1.5 millions are out there getting smashed every night and knifing people.

This country already has sufficient law to deal with any issues. Enforce them.

Diarmuid

ART6 wrote: »

1.5 millions, are actually binge drinkers? I simply don't believe that 1.5 millions are out there getting smashed every night and knifing people.

I don't think binge drinking means what you think it means

Brokentime

juan.kerr wrote: »

Is it not a pretty much accepted fact that the Irish are the problem?

Come on.

It's the whole taboo nature of having a few scoops. It's made so draconian to drink that people treat it as a release valve when it shouldn't be. You can factor in drinking into society, but you need to take the stigma and deviancy associated with it away.

Government simply reinforce that it's a naughty thing to do and that we'd all be getting wrecked if we were let.

Dirk Gently

ART6 wrote: »

minimum pricing, :

This is what the minister wants, the rest is fluff.

Chuck Stone

Newry loves Roisin.

Someone will suggest tolling the border next. In years from now people will have forgotten how all the tolls, taxes, levies and pricing orders started because they'll all be smashed on moonshine and home brew.

NIMAN

Ministers preaching about alcohol abuse while they have to have a bar at their place of work, and many runs up bills and take ages to pay them (or some never pay them).

Yeah right, of course we will take you seriously.

I would love a bar at my work.

If they want to show us they are serious about tackling drinking culture in this country, close the Dail bar.

creedp

ART6 wrote: »

Junior minister Roisin Shortall has come up with radical plans to curb binge drinking. These plans include such innovations as banning alcohol ads, making anyone who logs into an Internet site promoting alcohol state that they are over eighteen, banning sports sponsorship by brewers etc., minimum pricing, health labels on drink bottles -- and on and on....Once again a government minister (why do we have so many of them?) wanting to punish everyone because they don't seem to understand how to enforce the laws we already have.

Personally I favour a simpler solution: Get rid of Roisin Shortall. That woman would drive anyone to drink:eek:

I would think this is Shorthall's smoking ban .. no matter what else happens (doesn't happen) with respect to primary care reform which is her primary portfolio, if she could introduce some kick ass drink related controls for us drunks she would be celebrated forever by the 'shocked' member of our fine society. Its a 'win win' policy from her political perspective.

The current government strategy on binge drinking is incomplete. Raising prices, curbing access, increasing taxes, heavier policing, banning advertisements here there and everywhere, do not address the core, underlying problem here.

Irish people drink heavily because we want to, and because there isn't enough of a social stigma attached to doing it to discourage us.

The only way that this problem will be properly tackled, is over a generation, by genuinely changing Irish attitudes to drinking, and to the personal and social consequences that are involved with our binge drinking culture. This can't be done only by enforcement, taxation, and pricing, the solution has to have a measure of proper long term educational investment, and recognize the importance of changing Irish attitudes to alcohol. Without that, all of the enforcement, taxation, restriction, etc, is just an exercise in chasing your tail, and does nothing to address the cause of the problem.

A key issue with the current strategy towards tackling binge drinking in Ireland, is that the political system making the changes doesn't see any benefit for themselves in anything past five years from now, beyond the next election. They are far less likely to spend cash now for the benefit of some future administration who can publish a report with a narrow scope and claim the credit for their work in 10-15 years time than they are to enact a few quick-fix measures which are seen to be getting tough on /drink/drugs/crime/whatever the most pressing social problem happens to be, and which will go down well with the electorate at the next poll, benefiting them directly.

Minimum pricing and access controls are a prime example of this. They are a political measure. They are a stroke of a pen that will go down well with voters, but that don't fit into any long-term strategy which tackles the root cause of the problem.

The key to this issue, the missing piece of the puzzle is in effecting a long term change in our cultural thinking, by teaching our young people that going out and getting smashed is not a clever thing to do, and by teaching parents that glorifying/tolerating alcohol consumption and setting bad examples for their kids in relation to drinking habits is a bad thing, and only perpetuates the problem.

I've been involved in a professional capacity in the past with the organisers of public awareness campaigns like the ones that led to changes in thinking towards social and health issues like smoking, drinking and driving, recycling, sustainable use of energy, etc, both in Ireland and abroad. All of those issues faced the same challenge as the issue of Irish attitudes towards alcohol does at the moment, where there was an ingrained social acceptance of the problem needing to be tackled. All of those issues took years worth of advertising, educational programs, public awareness campaigns, and long-term generational change, in addition to the necessary legislation and enforcement, to see any kind of shift in popular thinking or behaviour. Many of the public awareness campaigns are still ongoing, and are only now being warmed to and accepted by the general population, while others are so far along that a complete shift in thinking has now occurred, and the problem is all but solved.

The binge drinking situation hasn't been handled that way in Ireland so far, because there hasn't been an acceptance by the powers that be that it's an issue that's going to take a generation or more to fix. Instead it's being handled in a short term, peacemeal way that is aimed at winning and preserving votes, not tackling the cause of the problem.

By way of an example, think about the situation we have at the moment in Ireland with drink driving, versus a generation or so ago. 30 years ago in Ireland, it was far more normal to have a few drinks and then drive home. You ran the risk of getting caught by a guard, sure, but the consequences were far less severe than they are nowadays, and crucially, the social stigma attached to doing so was far FAR less. You wouldn't expect to be openly, harshly criticised by society and your peers for drink-driving, unless you were seriously incapacitated by alcohol at the time, and presented an immediate danger to yourself and anyone else you met on the road.

Now, imagine downing a good few drinks in modern-day Ireland and trying to drive home. If you managed to get as far as your car without an interjection/intervention by your friends and peers in the pub, you would be far more fearful of retribution by the guards, the courts, penalty points, loss of license, etc, but crucially you would also be far more aware of the fact that you were doing something regarded as seriously wrong and out of order by society as a whole, and were acting selfishly, flouting a law that was there for a good reason, and in general, letting yourself and others down.

In relation to drink-driving, the old "ah sure what's the harm, I'll be grand" excuse no longer holds water. It's illegal, and it's wrong, and it's now accepted as such by the majority of right thinking people. The current level of checkpoints, breathylising, and enforcement backs that up, and is a major deterrent, which is good, but the first level of defence against it happening is in people's minds. Their attitude to the issue has changed fundamentally, and they are much less likely to transgress for that reason.

That's the key to the binge-drinking problem in Ireland, and until we can effect that change in thinking in the general population, and in young people especially, all the enforcement, minimum pricing, and access restriction in the world will only result in us throwing money at tackling the symptoms, and not addressing the core of the problem.

Max Powers

- no doubt a change of culture is needed
- The Gardai need to start taking drink from those drinking on the street, they simply arent doing it at the moment
- Need to fine/cut welfare of those drinking illegally on street or dangerous drunk
- removing easy availability in supermarkets/garages would help.
- im in favour of a minimum price

libra02

It is a typical Irish response ( and English too thinking about it). Ban it, hike up the price, abolish it.

Increasing the price of drink /banning sponsorship will not make once ounce of difference to people who want to go out and get smashed on drink every night nor will it have a huge impact on alocholics.

It seems the drink companies like Diago are the only people with the € to spend on advertising and if that money is gone well tickets prices will increase etc. Never mind say I have gone to GAA, rugby, football matches and never get the desire to drink Carlsberg, Guinness etc. Easy excuse for the Governement.

The Gov seems to be ignoring recent research which has shown that onl 3% of young people are influnced by advertising of drink and that though price does play some part the majority are influnced by family and friends. So it is education and a change in our mindset towards drinking is what is needed. It seems in this country PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY does not exist anyone - always everyone esle fault.

Why should the majority of people have to pay over the odds for a bottle of wine just because some irresponsible 16 / 17 year old decides it cool to drink himself into the nearest A&E.

Drink in Spain /Frnace is cheaper and has same availability as here but yet they do not have the same problems we do? Why is that- education, attitude etc

Dannyboy83

-The weather sucks
-Most activities are pricey
Give people something affordable to do and they will drink less frequently.

There has already been a huge improvement in the last 10 years.
A lot of people attend gyms or stay active.
There is very little assistance from the government in this respect tho.

I find Ireland quite unique in terms of the shortage of things to do, especially for young people. I can't imagine what it must have been like in the 80s. Christ.
No wonder everyone drank.

One thing I love about going to different countries in Europe is that you see young people out and about in the evenings, enjoying themselves.
Most towns in Ireland are like a ghost town in the evening.
Cork City Centre is frequently empty after 8pm on a weeknight, except when students are going on the piss.

ART6

NIMAN wrote: »

Ministers preaching about alcohol abuse while they have to have a bar at their place of work, and many runs up bills and take ages to pay them (or some never pay them).

Yeah right, of course we will take you seriously.

I would love a bar at my work.
If they want to show us they are serious about tackling drinking culture in this country, close the Dail bar.

Curious thought, that. In any other place of work drinking while at work is considered to be a gross misconduct offence leading to dismissal.

Shelflife

ok two people go into the local off licence, one buys 2 bottles of wine and one a case of cider.

the wine buyer goes home and himself and the wife drink both enjoy the buzz and go to bed, both go to work the following day.

the cider drinker goes to the local back alleyway and himself and his mate drink the lot, make noise , piss all over the place and break a window on the way home (quiet night for the boys).

both sets are binge drinkers but the reality is that we want to curb the antisocial behaviour of the second group.

the minister proposes to do this by increasing the price for both and making it harder to obtain the drink by closing certain establishments?

how is that fair to the wine drinkers (ie the majority) ?

why not enforce the laws that are there and when antisocial behaviour occurs you penalise the guilty with fines or community service.

why should the ordinary joe soap who enjoys his tipple be effectively punished because of the gob****es who makea mess and cause trouble?

ART6

Shelflife wrote: »

ok two people go into the local off licence, one buys 2 bottles of wine and one a case of cider.

the wine buyer goes home and himself and the wife drink both enjoy the buzz and go to bed, both go to work the following day.

the cider drinker goes to the local back alleyway and himself and his mate drink the lot, make noise , piss all over the place and break a window on the way home (quiet night for the boys).

both sets are binge drinkers but the reality is that we want to curb the antisocial behaviour of the second group.

the minister proposes to do this by increasing the price for both and making it harder to obtain the drink by closing certain establishments?

how is that fair to the wine drinkers (ie the majority) ?

why not enforce the laws that are there and when antisocial behaviour occurs you penalise the guilty with fines or community service.

why should the ordinary joe soap who enjoys his tipple be effectively punished because of the gob****es who makea mess and cause trouble?

Exactly! Apply the law that already exists and stop this endless approach beloved of ignorant politicians of punishing the many for the sins of the few. Oh wait! If we increase the minimum price of alcohol then the excise duty will increase, as will the VAT. Brilliant! That will fund my TDs or ministers pension that I never contributed a cent for, and when the NPF has been eliminated to bail out the banks and any other crazy initiative we could think of in our sleep. And we can tell everyone, with the total support of the puritanical lobby, how we are doing it for your own good and to stop you all p****ng in O'Connell Street.

This might possible result in some form of public backlash, but if it does we have the safe fallback that the ECB/IMF/Angela Merkal insist upon it. In fact, if while we go on our long Summer holidays, we give some thought to this, we can do what the Troika suggest and severely cut anything resembling welfare support for anyone who is not actually dead while increasing taxes in the guise of "charges". While we are doing all that we could also sell off anything that is not bolted down, even if it belongs to the taxpayers who paid for it in the first place. With a bit of carefull PR we can pay for a major press release that insists that we have cut government expenditure to the point where the only remaining costs are those of paying off speculators and funding our pensions. Result!

MadsL

Raising the drinking age to 21 anyone? Nah, too much lobbying by the Victuallers to keep drink prices high, clamp down on supermarket sales and ensure teenagers in the bars.

Farmer Pudsey

Alot of people think That access and pricing have nothing to do with it. I come from the generation where it was as expensive to drink at home as in the pub.

I see how a lot of the teen/early 20's if going out go to the supermarket/off licience buy 12 cans go home drink 5 or 6 go out to the pub have one or two there back to the party where they finish off the rest of the slab. I blame a lot of parents who allow there kids when they reach 18 have a birthday party in the local pub and everybody comes back after for to finish off there slabs.

This is an area where serious price rises are needed in supermarkets/off liciences also I believe that closing time's should be changed back to 11.30 pm and allow clubs to open until 1.30 am and enforce it.

mathepac

A quick input on stats here. According to the 2011 census, the population of Ireland is c. 4.6 million.

Age-wise this breaks down as :

Age % of total Population
0-14 years 21.10%
15-64 years 67.30%
65+ years 11.60%

Just for the purposes of crude estimations, if we take the core problem drinking / binging years as 15-64 (67.30% of the population), and apply the usual heuristic to this number, that 30% of 67.30% of the population don't drink and never will.

So we get 67.30% of 4.6M = 3.1M, and 70% of 3.1m = 2.2M drinkers.

So what percentage of 2.2M people have actual binge / problem-drinking traits? Treatment centres etc say that approximately 1 in 10 drinkers is a problem drinker / binge drinker / alcoholic. So it would appear, based on my very very crude sums, that about 220,000 people in Ireland have drink-related problems. Does that sound reasonable?

One issue as I see it with the Irish attitude to drinking is that you're either "drinking" or "not drinking". My parents used to give out to me if I had a pint or two a couple of times during the week while if I went til the weekend without anything and got absolutely hammered it was fine. I see the same attitude even with friends in their early 20s, they seem to see any drinking as indications of an issue. It's more prevalent probably among older people but it's still around.

Increasing prices won't help, cracking down on anti-social behaviour is what's needed. Seeing Gardai walking around til 8pm at the weekends and disappearing until 3am is very frustrating. Drinking in public isn't a problem in and of itself IMO.

Shelflife

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

Alot of people think That access and pricing have nothing to do with it. I come from the generation where it was as expensive to drink at home as in the pub.

I see how a lot of the teen/early 20's if going out go to the supermarket/off licience buy 12 cans go home drink 5 or 6 go out to the pub have one or two there back to the party where they finish off the rest of the slab. I blame a lot of parents who allow there kids when they reach 18 have a birthday party in the local pub and everybody comes back after for to finish off there slabs.

This is an area where serious price rises are needed in supermarkets/off liciences also I believe that closing time's should be changed back to 11.30 pm and allow clubs to open until 1.30 am and enforce it.

So just to be clear, you want to punish the likes of myself who enjoys a social pint or two because of the actions of a few.

So on sat night my wife and i are kicked out of the pub at 11.30 and if we want to continue our night we have to travel 10miles to get another drink ? there are plenty of small towns with no clubs.

The laws are there, just enforce them. I too have no problem with public drinking just with the anti social behaviour that a minority engage in.

BluntGuy

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

Cork City Centre is frequently empty after 8pm on a weeknight, except when students are going on the piss.

I have to say I agree with this.

But even at that I would suggest that Cork does have things to do if people seek out the experiences. In other towns, especially smaller ones where the only activity available might be GAA, I think this is definitely a problem.

Farmer Pudsey

Shelflife wrote: »

So just to be clear, you want to punish the likes of myself who enjoys a social pint or two because of the actions of a few.

So on sat night my wife and i are kicked out of the pub at 11.30 and if we want to continue our night we have to travel 10miles to get another drink ? there are plenty of small towns with no clubs.

The laws are there, just enforce them. I too have no problem with public drinking just with the anti social behaviour that a minority engage in.

Since the late closing has come in all that has happened is that people go the the pub later, I enjoy a few pints also on a sat night however before late closing I went after mass half eight now I find I do not go out until 10 pm I spend no more money meet no different people the only difference is that it is that it is unsafe to drive until nearly eleven instead of nine .

A rural publican that I was talking to agreed with me he is opening two hours later for very little extra. Most people have only so much to spend when it gone it is gone. If my budget/tolerence is 6-7 pints then I go out to target that