This article is from page 18 of the 2013-10-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
AN INCREASE on the price of alcohol in next week’s budget could have a very positive influence in helping to prevent many Clare youngsters from abusing alcohol.
According to David McPhillips, Community Substance Misuse Team, limiting the availability of alcohol is the only real way that problem drinking among young people can be tackled.
Mr McPhilips, who works with teenagers affected by alcohol and drug problems in the Clare area, believes that changing the binge drinking culture amongst Irish youths can only be tackled once the immediate problem is tackled through limiting access through cost.
“Price and availability are the big things. If a young person has € 10 and the price of a bottle of vodka is € 20, then they are going to have a difficulty in buying it. Price and availability are the two things that you can impact on,” he told The Clare People yesterday.
“I think cultural factors have to come later. It is hard to change a culture and create a situation where, to be hammered drunk, is not an excuse. That has to change but that is something that can only be changed person to person, and family by family and that is not an easy thing to do.
“So you have to look at what you can act on and price and availability are the two things you can effect. But how do you change a culture. If you look at consumption in Ireland I think you find that consumption has gone down [in recent years] because it is directly related to availability, price and disposable income. The issue is not overall consumption but the quantity that we drink in a single drinking session.
“Binge drinking is the big concern and always has been. It is not the overall consumption, which is probably not much more than anywhere else, it is the way that we drink.”
Early this year, Clare’s U21 AllIreland winning manager Donal Moloney revealed that measures were taken to rid Clare hurling of the damaging effects of alcohol after a number of “dangerous situations” arose with the underage teams.
“If somebody says to a player, if they are out drinking heavy then they are not getting on the team, that can have a massive effect. Those kind of brief interventions can be very positive and could help changing people’s culture towards drinking,” continued David.