Sir, - Much has been written and said recently about the scandal of drunkenness in this country, especially among the young. Statistics tell their own shocking story: £3.5 billion spent annually on drink, Ireland having the highest rate of alcoholism in Europe, even children in their pre-teens drinking at weekends, the Monday-morning-after-the-night-before syndrome among secondary school pupils, fatal car accidents where young drivers are concerned, and so on ad nauseam.
Many reasons have been put forward to explain/excuse the phenomenon, among which are lack of parental control, peer pressure, too much spending money, the new liberalism, IDs not being checked by publicans. But it must be obvious to everyone by now that advertising is the main culprit. The ad merchants spend millions on aiming their product at the young and impressionable, and advertising certainly does pay.
The message in the drink ads is that drinking is cool, trendy, "the way to make friends and influence people". But above all it is fun. A recent ad for a popular brand of beer shows a group of young people drinking in a pub and laughing like maniacs. Another shows a young person falling off a wall with the dint of laughing. The message is unmistakeable: alcohol makes one happy, the life and soul of the party, and funny, hysterically funny.
What of the aftermath that is never shown? The unwanted pregnancies, or the mangled car wrecks and mangled bodies, the tears, the grieving parents. If the Minister for Justice were serious about coming to grips with the social and moral destruction of the young through alcohol he should ban all drink advertising. But then, did the same Minister not extend drinking time? - Yours, etc.
Vera Hughes, Moate, Co Westmeath.