Tackling alcohol abuse

Published on Monday 21 January 2008 20:45

Alcohol abuse as endemic to Scotland is now a deadly truth (your report, 18 January). An increasing proportion of leisure time is focused on the irresponsible consumption of alcohol. However, to think economic prohibition will alter this menace is, at best, optimistic. In tackling the consequences of teenage drinking, we need to consider and act upon complex social issues.

John Carnochan's insight that drink is a means of developing "social reach" is illuminating, suggesting the influence of peers is the engine of demand. Until we find ways of engaging young people in prosperous activity and changing their role models, we are avoiding the fight with this growing scourge.

That is why the Scottish Government's refusal to continue funding ProjectScotland, a volunteering organisation for 16-25s, is so disappointing. It has, for thousands, encouraged "social reach" based on community involvement, and has a track record of creating better futures where excessive drinking and antisocial behaviour have been the norm.

To expect change to begin through sales restrictions is misguided, particularly while organisations effectively engaging the issue are deprioritised.

KATE MAVOR, Chief executive ProjectScotland, Melville Street, Edinburgh

Your editorial (18 January) says we haven't the time "to give our young people a different perspective on life – and wean them off this new alcohol-fuelled nihilism". We need their bad behaviour stopped now. That they are drunk at the time of the offence should be treated as an aggravating and not a mitigating circumstance. The purpose of punishment is the protection of society, not the rehabilitation of offenders. Let's stop playing at psychiatry, and look to our safety.

IAIN RAMSAY, Dundas Street, Edinburgh

The spotlight is on the ill effects of heavy drinking among the young again, but most people still maintain that getting drunk is morally acceptable, while simultaneously lamenting its consequences. A society that smiles on drunkenness will always be blighted by problems, but the simple biblical moral position that drinking alcohol is acceptable but getting drunk is not offers a simple principle that could help counter the problems.

As with illegal drugs, many educationists maintain that information, not morality, is the key, but mere encyclopaedic knowledge of the alcohol content of different drinks makes for cost-effective rather than responsible drinkers.

RICHARD LUCAS, Cowan Road, Edinburgh