JOHN F. FALLON,
Madam, - I wonder why writers to your Letters columns and elsewhere use the word "culture" in relation to our excessive drinking habits: for instance, "drink culture" or "our culturally embedded drinking problems".
Culture is a high word denoting enlightenment, civilisation, refinement. My dictionary defines culture as a training or discipline by which man's moral and intellectual nature is elevated. This is the very reverse of the pathetic condition of humanity on the streets of our cities and towns at weekends witnessed in the recent Prime Time report.
History shows that we Irish have a long-standing problem with alcohol. The transformation of the drinking habits of the people brought about by the Apostle of Temperance, Father Theobald Mathew, before the Famine was well known but perhaps is now forgotten. George Russell, the poet, commenting on the Liquor Commission of 1925, highlighted the cultural deprivation in the country where the only social expression of large members of the population appeared to be drink and talk. Today almost every occasion is geared to the consumption of alcohol.
This extraordinary dependence on drink must not only be a sign of social waste and of neglected opportunity, but also a reflection on our education system, which relies so much on examination success to the neglect of social and moral values and the absence of a philosophy of life that can offer some resistance to the glamour of consumerism.
Perhaps we all need to take an alcoholiday this Christmas. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN F. FALLON, Boyle, Co Roscommon.
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Madam, - I think it is very naïve of the Government not to have realised that most teenagers in this country don't usually drink "alco-pops". These beverages have always been too expensive. Most teenagers are going to buy beer if they want to get drunk: it is a lot cheaper and you get drunk a lot faster. The only time I remember drinking "alco-pops" when I was a teenager was when they were bought for me at 21st birthday parties or by my friends' parents.
As I was growing up I never had the urge to binge; I think this was because of my upbringing, when I was allowed small amounts of drink under supervision. I never saw alcohol as an amazing phenomenon. I am not saying that everybody that is brought up this way is going to be indifferent to drinking, but I believe parents should educate their children about alcohol in a more practical way. Parents set examples for other situations, so they should also set an example for this.
A lot of people carry their drink binge habits long into adulthood. Teenagers shouldn't be the only ones who are singled out. Parents cannot come home from weddings, parties or christenings unable to stand, and then tell their son or daughter that alcohol is bad! - Yours, etc.,
FRANCISCA RIBEIRO, Green Park, Dublin 22.
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Madam, - An article in your edition of December 5th highlighted the negative impact which alcohol-related injuries are having on accident and emergency units throughout the State. The article specifically referred to University College Hospital, Galway, where, on a recent week-end, nine people were "horrifically drunk and five of them required plastic surgery for alcohol related injuries".
In the article's closing paragraph the Mayor of Galway, Mr Val Hanley, a local publican, is reported to have told members at a meeting of the Western Health Board he did not think any publican went out of their way to serve drink to the under-aged. Perhaps Mayor Hanley would do the public a better service if he were to call upon all of his fellow publicans to go out of their way to deny drink to the under-aged. - Yours, etc.,
EDWARD D. RAFFERTY, Castlebridge, Co Wexford.