Kevin O'Shaughnessy: Note to the killjoys: this is Ireland, not Afghanistan
THE anti-fun brigade is on the warpath. We, the citizens of Ireland, have been caught rotten, like bold schoolboys behind the bike shed, skulling the equivalent of a bottle of vodka each a week.
Our elders and betters are unimpressed and we've now been summoned to the headmaster's office for a telling-off.
Armed with a 96-page report, the suitably austere-sounding National Substance Misuse Strategy Steering Group yesterday laid out the charges against us and proposed a series of measures aimed at mending our ways.
Quoting OECD figures from last November, they say the average Irish person aged 15 or older drank 11.9 litres of pure alcohol in 2010, which corresponds to 482 pints of lager, 125 bottles of wine or 45 bottles of vodka.
Given that 19pc of the adult population are abstainers, the actual amount of alcohol consumed by the average drinker is considerably more.
Really, they were being kind to us, because if they had instead taken the most recent World Health Organisation figures, the average would have shot up another 20 per cent or thereabouts, to 14.4 litres of pure alcohol. How two such reputable, well-funded organisations could come up with such divergent data is puzzling.
But who are we to quibble?
Anyway, they've made their point. We're drinking too much, though not near as much as we used to drink back in 2000, and we're still way behind the world leaders for boozing, the Moldovans, who put away a staggering 18.22 litres of pure alcohol every year.
Actually, despite all the self-flagellation, we still trail the sophisticated French, the Czechs, Russians, Portuguese and even the South Koreans, among others, when it comes to knocking back the gargle.
But let's not underestimate the problem. We, as a nation, are still drinking way more than we should be.
So, what's an acceptable level of drinking? Well, anyone who had a few spare hours to plough through yesterday's National Substance Misuse Strategy Steering Group's report could reach only one conclusion: the only acceptable level is zero.
The group, set up by the Department of Health and led by Dr Tony Holohan, has come up with some pretty convincing evidence.
Drink is directly responsible for 88 deaths every month. It is a contributory factor in half of all suicides. It is associated with 2,000 beds being occupied every night in Irish hospitals.
It cost the health care system €1.2bn in 2007, while alcohol-related crime cost an estimated €1.19bn the same year. Terrible. Wouldn't we be living in Utopia if only we ditched the demon drink?
Yes, but only if you believe Utopia to be Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan or Yemen -- the five countries in the world with the lowest rate of alcohol consumption.
So how do our elders and betters suggest that we become more like those hotbeds of Muslim fundamentalism?
Well, of course, the easy option: increase the price of booze, so that it becomes less affordable. Oh and phase out drinks-industry sponsorship of sport. That will sort 'em.
Increasing the price will surely work. Just as it worked with stamping out smoking.
Yes, successive governments made a great success out of that, gradually hiking up the price, but making sure not to increase it by too much in any one go in case it would shock people into actually giving up and thus kill off a lucrative revenue stream for the taxman.
Increasing tax on alcohol, or imposing a minimum price, will disproportionally affect those in the lowest income groups, driving even more families into poverty.
Then again, much of the evidence to date suggests that maybe driving more families into poverty is actually official government policy.
As for the ban on sports sponsorship, that too will work, just like the 2005 EU-wide ban on tobacco sponsorship in sport finally sorted out the continent's nicotine problem.
In reality, it only succeeded in virtually killing off Formula One racing on the continent, with no discernible reduction in tobacco consumption.
Banning Guinness from giving the GAA cash to promote hurling would, in all likelihood, result in a similar outcome.
With the cultural treasure that is hurling struggling for funding and exposure, the impressionable young kids will be able to turn their undivided attention to the Heineken Cup, the Carling Cup and other such sporting delights, over which our Government, thankfully, has no control.
Yes, we drink too much. Yes, something needs to be done to make us more like Afghanistan.
The recommendations in yesterday's report, if implemented, may well do just that.
Thankfully, experience tells us it will end up gathering dust in the Department of Health.
Irish Independent
