Alcohol Action Ireland conference
Alcohol Action Ireland held their conference ‘Girls, Women and Alcohol: The changing nature of female alcohol consumption in Ireland’ on 21 April 2015. Katherine Brown, director of the Institute of Alcohol Studies in the UK described the changes in female alcohol consumption, from having a large role in the temperance movement, to the ‘ladette’ drinking culture in the 1990s, to the recent rise of ‘mummy’s wine time’, whereby wine is now a socially acceptable coping mechanism for women trying to balance work and home life. She said we now live in an alcogenic environment, and outlined the role that marketing to women by the alcohol industry had played. Alcohol is marketed to women as glamorous, sophisticated, feminine, sexy, often placed alongside lipstick, handbags and shoes.
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Alcohol pricing model applied to Ireland
In 2013 the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group (SARG) at Sheffield University was commissioned by the Irish government to adapt the Sheffield pricing model for alcohol to Ireland in order to appraise the potential impact of different pricing policies. The report was published on 11 March 2015.1 Some key findings from the report are presented here.
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National Community Action on Alcohol Pilot Project
In 2014 the Alcohol Forum, in partnership with the HSE and the Department of Health, initiated the National Community Action on Alcohol Pilot Project (NCAAPP).1 It aims to build the capacity of communities, through local and regional drugs and alcohol task forces (L/RDATF), to identify local alcohol-related harm issues and priorities and to develop integrated local alcohol action plans. A community mobilisation approach is a priority theme cited in the National Substance Misuse Strategy:2 There is a need for a community-wide, inclusive and coordinated approach to promote greater social responsibility and prevention and awareness raising on alcohol related issues. Communities should be supported to develop the evidence-based skills and methodologies to implement community mobilisation programmes with a view to increasing public awareness and discussion of alcohol problems, and to build community capacity to respond to alcohol problems at local level. (p. 27)
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Fianna Fáil publishes drugs action plan
On 16 April 2015 Fianna Fáil launched a proposal for a Drugs Action Plan.1 In his Foreword to the plan, Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Justice and Equality, Niall Collins TD, wrote about the drugs ‘crisis’ and the ‘inadequate response’ of the government; the Fianna Fáil web site hailed the plan as a ‘radical new approach’. The plan reprioritises actions under the current policy framework. Pointing to changes in the nature of the problem, including (1) a changing pattern of drug use, with alcohol and cannabis ‘causing problems for a vastly higher proportion of the population [than opiate addiction]’, (2) an over-concentration of resources in areas designated as disadvantaged, resulting in ‘huge geographical areas with no services at all’, and (3) new problems including the ‘new poor’ and ‘social problems such as mental health problems and co-occurring substance misuse issues manifest across the entire socio-economic spectrum’, the plan proposes a more equitable redistribution of resources between urban and rural areas, and between regional and local drugs and alcohol task forces, according to need.
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Changing drug trends but static drug policies
On 21–23 May 2015 the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP) held its ninth annual conference, in Ghent, Belgium.1 Aileen O’Gorman of the University of the West of Scotland, Glasgow, United Kingdom, gave a paper at the conference based on a study of licit and illicit drug use patterns in the Finglas–Cabra local drugs task force area undertaken in the second half of 2012.2 The conference paper was titled ‘Changing drug trends: static drug policies’. The abstract of O’Gorman’s paper is printed below.3 (Citations included in the abstract have been deleted as full publication details were not included.)
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Ireland participates in innovative policy think-tank
Although the oldest international drug policy think-tank, the Pompidou Group, of which Ireland is a member, is arguably the most innovative intergovernmental body working in the area of policy on psychoactive substances and addictions in the world today. Its achievements over the past forty years are outlined in the following article. The new work programme for 2015–2018 has four thematic priorities:1
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What is the Pompidou Group?
The Pompidou Group is an intergovernmental drug policy think-tank and champion of evidence-based drug policy. Formed over 40 years ago, it has spearheaded many new initiatives subsequently taken over by other agencies. For example, the concepts of monitoring trans-national drug abuse and indicator development were introduced by the Pompidou Group, and then taken over by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Methods to measure the use of alcohol, tobacco and drugs were developed by the Pompidou Group, and the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) is now an independent programme that serves governments in 51 countries as the principal data source on drug-use trends.1
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