Francis Borg, the permanent secretary at the Justice, Dialogue and the Family Ministry, compared the situation of alcohol consumption when he was a child to that of underage drinking nowadays, and he observed that it was normal practice for elderly relatives to offer children a small glass of vermouth in the past.
Nowadays, things have changed and few would probably offer a child alcohol, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t got an underage drinking problem. On the contrary, Malta has one of the worst underage drinking problems in Europe as demonstrated by the results of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Drugs (Espad), which the Foundation for Social Welfare Services presented yesterday.
As Mr Borg and other speakers said during the presentation of the results, it is indeed worrying that 86% of the respondents (15- to 16-year-olds) said they had consumed alcohol during the previous 12 months, and that 56% replied in the affirmative to questions related to heavy episodic drinking during the previous 30 days.
But what is even more worrying is the frustration demonstrated by people such as Sedqa’s (the national agency against dependencies) services manager, who criticised the serious lack of enforcement with respect to underage drinking.
And as the Espad report showed, alcohol consumption among young people leads to other problems, not least the possibility of involvement in physical fights, problems with friends and parents, poor performance at school or work, and having sex without the use of contraception, among other things.
Marilyn Clarke from the National Commission on the Abuse of Drugs and Other Dependencies referred to the national alcohol policy which is expected to be presented in the coming weeks, and with particular reference to the possibility of introducing minimum pricing for alcoholic drinks, she hinted at resistance from the alcohol industry.
Over the years, the government has introduced various legal notices in a bid to fight the problem of underage drinking and excessive drinking among the young generation. The legal drinking age going up from 16 to 17 was one of them, as was the introduction of a legal notice prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks after 9pm.
But such legislation is useless without proper enforcement and you don’t blame professionals who have been working hard to fight the alcohol problem for being frustrated. It is indeed an uphill struggle, and lack of enforcement only makes things worse.
A second major issue is that related to the sense of responsibility among small businesses such as bars, band clubs, confectionaries and corner shops. It is not only the authorities that should have a sense of responsibility towards young people. A spokesman for the Chamber of SMEs (GRTU) was recently quoted as saying that it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the business community to nanny the rest of the community.
As Dr Clarke hinted yesterday, the business community is not in favour of a minimum pricing policy on alcoholic drinks. And while it is understandable that the primary aim of a business is to make money, business people cannot ignore the problem of alcoholism among teenagers.
The government and society at large ought to demonstrate a bigger sense of responsibility and tackle the root problem; otherwise it is bound to remain an uphill struggle, if not an impossible task, for those who deal with people with alcohol problems on a daily basis.