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THE FAILURE OF successive governments to develop a National Alcohol Policy has had a “devastating” impact on Irish society in general and family life in particular according to Public Health Specialist, Dr Declan Bedford.
Bedford was speaking at the annual Irish Medical Organisation Doolin Lecture in the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, yesterday.
In his lecture he said that Ireland has become a nation of binge drinkers with a dangerous ambivalence towards alcohol and the damage it inflicts on lives across the community.
He said a strong indication of this was the fact that “there are more places where you can buy drink in Ireland than there are shops where you can buy fruit, vegetables or milk”.
Bedford said the statistics around alcohol in Ireland were staggering:
- The average Irish adult who drinks consume the equivalent of a bottle of vodka a week.
- Every seven hours someone dies from an alcohol-related illness.
- Irish people are now the biggest binge drinkers in Europe and only three in every ten Irish adults on a normal drinking occasion have two drinks or less.
- Research has shown that one in four adults binge drink every week, Bedford said. (Binge drinking is defined as more than five drinks in a single session.)
Under-aged drinking
The health specialist said Ireland’s alcohol problem is not just confined to adults with a European study indicating that half of our 15-16-year-olds have drunk alcohol in the psat month. A quarter have been drunk at some stage in the past month and in the case of Irish girls they drank 44 per cent more alcohol in their last “session” than their European peers.
“Children have told us that they find it easy to get alcohol and this is confirmed that one in four mid-teenagers bought alcohol in off-sales outlets and one in three consumed alcohol in a bar or disco in the past 30 days.”
“Alcohol needs to be less available and more strictly controlled to protect our children from the harms of alcohol,” Bedford said.
Bedford said the impact on family live in terms of relationships, disruption to home and work life might not be easily calculated but said we do know that alcohol is a factor in half of the suicides in Ireland.
He said alcohol abuse also imposes enormous burdens on the health services with an estimated one in every eight people attending at a Emergency Department unit there as a result of alcohol.
“In pure financial terms alcohol related harm in Ireland costs the economy €3.7 billion,” he said.
“Averaged out over all alcohol consumed in Ireland, this means that on average that each standard unit of alcohol consumed causes 85 cent worth of harm.”
“We need a national strategy that should include minimum pricing in Ireland to control the sales of alcohol at discount prices in supermarkets and other off licences,” he added. “The minimum price should cover at least the cost of the harm.”
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The EU gives taxpayers money to Pakistan. Have a nice Sunday!
@Griff: As does the US. So your point is?
@Mick Jordan: I don’t pay taxes in the US so I don’t give a shit. I do however have a problem with the EU giving money to a country that spends vast amounts on nuclear weapon programs. Do you get the point now?
@Mick Jordan: the US are at least calling the aid into question as a result of Pakistani terrorist supporting ways. The EU responded by criticising the racist rhetoric of the US.
@Griff: stop giving aid to Afghanistan because Afghanistan provides shelter to foreign terrorists against local terrorists. This is how Afghanistan fights terrorism. Stop giving aid to a Hezbollah – Hamas like milita in Afghanistan
@Griff: We Irish receive more from the EU than we pay. So your argument about being an Irish Taxpayer is irrelevant. What you are attempting to do is make this into an Anti EU thing rather than an Anti Pakistani issue.
@Mick Jordan: thats not true. We Irish used to receive more from the EU than we pay. However now we are net contributors to the Eu.
@JimmyMc: Not since 2008 we are not. We returned to net recipients after the Finacial crisis began. We were a net contributor for a few years during the Celtic Tiger but that time has passed.
@Mick Jordan: that’s just not true. In fact Ireland became a net contributor to the EU in 2014- ironically, while under EU austerity measures.
https://www.businessworld.ie/economy/Ireland-contributes-more-money-than-it-gets-to-EU-for-first-time-564636.html
Pakistan has being playing on both sides of the fence since the 70′s. It was they that formed the Taliban in the 80′s, it is they that have financed and armed them since. And it was Pakistan that hid Bin Laden for years. And it was Pakistan that initially sold nuclear material to North Korea.
@Mick Jordan: If anywhere in this world needs to be invaded its Pakistan, it’s a complete schithole, corrupt government, police, army and secret service. All of them active terrorists!..This country serves no purpose on this earth to anyone or anything only islamic extremists and terrorists…Nuke it, every inch of it!
@Mick Jordan: But Afghanistan provides shelter to terrorists and therefore it will pay the price. Issue of Durand line is created by Afghans not us and therefore terrorist is the one who doesn’t doesn’t recognise the international border
@Not a Historian: The Hakani network is a Pakistani based terrorist organisation. Situated in the Swat valley region of North West Pakistan. Funded and armed by the Pakistani Intelligence Service along with its brother organisation the Afghan Taliban. Afghanistan as a State is in reality one in name only. The Central Government has little or no control over large areas of the country.
When is Donald Trump going to cut his ties with the Wahhabist Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Why is he providing U.S. funding to these countries?
@Alt Right Crybaby: He announced this month that Pakistan was losing funding for this specific point, something Obama never did. As for Saudi Arabia, it’s not funding they get , it’s arms deals, as most European countries continue to do. But hey, let’s not let facts get in the way of Trump bashing!!! The problem was Saudi Arabia funding extremist mosques and schools around the world which promoted an extreme form of Islam.
@Brian Smith: Oh it’s only arms deals, phew, I thought it was something more dangerous and sinister than that!
Proof read for the love of God!!
RIP. Those poor people.
It all stems back to the Durand line. A temporary line carved out by Britain to protect India from Russia. The line divided the pushtan tribe in afghanistan and half it’s tribe ended up within Pakistan borders and has caused chaos ever since. This is what happens when British colonialists carve out delimiters willy nilly on a map.
The line should have dissolved and the pushtan province should have reverted back within Afghan borders in 1993 but conveniently Britain lost the original Afghan copies outlining this temporary border but presented an English copy with this vital component omitted.
@saoirse janneau: I just knew when I read this story about middle easterners killing other middle easterners it just had to somehow be the fault of Europeans. Are darker skinned people ever responsible for their own actions and behaviour in your view, or is it always indirectly the fault of white people? Are you familiar with the concept of the soft bigotry of lower expectations?
@saoirse janneau: dude, it is an internationally recognised border and Afghanistan doesn’t recognise it so clearly it is Afghanistan who’s behind terrorism. As long as Afghanistan differentiates between good & bad terrorists such large scale attacks are going no where because terrorists are friends with no one
@Liam Doyle: not referring to skin color at all. You are. Look up the history of the partitioning of Ireland and what ensued and get back to me.
@Liam Doyle: Hmm! saoirse has a very similar writing style to Tony Daly and Fiona de Freyne.
@saoirse janneau: childishly simplistic argument. The Troubles in Northern Ireland stemmed from sectarian inequality and subjugation. Troubles ended when these factors were addressed, and yet we remain partitioned. Your argument is “muh, line on map was drawn here and 50 years later trouble broke out, ergo drawing lines on maps causes trouble to break out, thus those that draw the lines are responsible for the trouble, not the combatants.”
Are you familiar with the concert of the soft bigotry of lower expectations?
@Liam Doyle: the country was divided without proper consultation. The Durand line has never been recognised by any Afghan government even though it’s said to be Internationally recognised without the acceptance of a vital party. Karzai and his government has never recognised it. The Pashtun tribe has been divided and as such there are strong allegiances across each border for the Taliban to move in either direction as they don’t see a border. The similarity between the situation in the North is that vast tracts of the population on either side didn’t recognise the partition. There was movement in and out of both sides of the border by paramilitary factions as there is there.
@Liam Doyle: in relation to your bigotry comment there is always a story in the backdrop to violence (which i dont condone). The human race isn’t that erratic . Brown or white.
@saoirse janneau: OK, but as already outlined partitioning Ireland did not lead to decades long violence in response. There were problems initially of course, our civil war and inter community clashes north of the border. But this all died off, and the conflict that sparked in the late 60s was a direct result of discriminatory policies enacted by the Orange state, not continued resistance the border. We accept the border now, and recognise it can only be removed by democratic mandate. Afgans and Pakistanis don’t recognise the border (sykes-picot lines all over the mid east, hardly a uniquely pushtan problem) and they want it removed by slaughtering those who resist their vision. It ain’t the Brits’ fault they’re primitive savages, it’s their own fault for acting like primitive savages.
These fanatics must be defeated and destroyed just like the IRAs,
@Adam Reid: This is bait.
@Anthony Flanagan Mark: blowing up of innocent people just different part of the world!
@Anthony Flanagan Mark: I guess a phone warning makes it all ok then, I suppose you blame the authorities for those who died in the bombings and not the actual bombers!
Those who provide shelter to terrorists will definitely pay the price & Afghanistan shelters terrorists. Afghanistan must understand that terrorists are friends with no one !
@Not a Historian: Your name is fitting.
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