Weasel Words

national | consumer issues | opinion/analysis Friday June 17, 2005 14:21 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 042 93 71310

Is Alcohol Benign?

Is alcohol a false helper which slips its hook into us under our guard? Does it anaesthesise us into a false sense of well-being and security? Are we merely conning ourselves that we are getting pleasure out of drink?

In a slightly ambivalent paean to Micheál McDowell, Minister of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Des Gilroy writes in this mornings Irish Times:-

"In that context, we should warmly welcome the decision from a Minister who has shown he is prepared to listen and to implement a policy which in the long-term should lead to more responsible and civilised drinking in this country."

Des Gilroy is Chairman (sic.) of the Progressive Democrats (Dublin North-East).

Now I myself gave up alcohol for Lent in 1996 and resolved that Lent that I would only drink on Sundays and Holydays thereafter. However I soon went back to my old habits (three or four pints of Guinness followed by two neat whiskeys four nights a week in Angela’s). However the next Lent (1997) I again abstained from alcohol - but this time I resolved to stay off it altogether after Lent. I would have been 53 at that time and I took my first bottle of stout (which my father bought for me in Paul Muldoon’s in Ardee) when I was 17.

When I was drinking I loved it but in the last eight years my attitude has changed. Now I think that drink mesmerises people the way a weasel is supposed to mesmerise a rabbit before he despatches it. There is too much benevolence toward alcohol in the public mind - echoed by the letter writer above. To my alcohol free brain it now seems to me to be misleading to suggest that drinking is ever "responsible and civilised." That idea is only a mirage carefully cultivated to facilitate our foolish habits and to enrich the drinks business irrespective of all the damaging consequences that we know about if only we reflected for a moment (especially if we could get alcohol out of our system). And older people are just as gullible as the young where drink is concerned.

I think the Minister and the Progressive Democrats would do better to take their cues from Dr Joe Barry. In a fine article in the Irish Times today on alcohol ("We need to have less availability of alcohol, not more") he concludes "Alcohol, truly, is no ordinary commodity."