MARTIN FORD,
Madam, - If you go through Irish towns and cities on weekend nights you can't help seeing many young people drunk out of their heads. This makes me both angry and sad.
I'm angry that pub owners will let those young men and women get into this awful state and then chuck them out on the street like zombies, not knowing if they are coming or going, where they join the queue outside the disco, sometimes in heavy rain, as the bouncers of these places herd them along as if they were cattle, vetting who is to get in and who is to be kept out.
I sometimes wonder if there is any difference between a drug-pusher and a publican, as what they both sell is a drug, except that the publican is just longer at the trade than a drug dealer, is more respectable and is part of the system, and the Government gets its share of the publican's profits. I'm sad that in years to come some of those young weekend drinkers will be winos and down-and-outs and there is nothing I can do but watch them waste their youth on society's oldest drug.
I also observe the young foreign students studying here in Ireland who have a more grown-up view on the intake of booze. They may take one or two beers then go home to their flats while the Irish spend every cent in their pockets and make pigs of themselves. I take no pleasure in writing this as I am Irish and they are my people, yet I see the people of tomorrow go down the tubes as they throw their futures away for a pint glass.
In the old days the people were kept in check by the priests of the parish as people had fear of the clergy and respect for the collar, whether priest or parson. But that's all gone now because of the sex scandals in the priesthood.
I fear we may have thrown out the baby with the bath water. The message is still right and always the same. What we need is people to be raised up by God to tell the publicans that they are no different to the drug dealers and that if the people of Ireland don't mend their ways the country is going to the dogs. - Yours, etc.,
MARTIN FORD,
St Anne's Terrace,
Sligo.