What really inspires youngsters to drink: adverts, or grown-ups getting legless at Communions?

IT wasn’t the influence of advertising that got me started as a teen drinker – even if the famous Sally O’Brien TV ads promoting a lager called Harp (‘and the way she might look at you’) was one of the most iconic of that era. As it happened, nobody that I knew in Cork drank Harp.

You drank Carling or Heineken because they were brewed locally. Harp was made in somewhere called Dundalk and, local legend had it, tasted terrible because it didn’t benefit from the use of River Lee water and was full of chemicals to mask that.

I drank more stout than lager, though, which was unusual for a teenager because lager was cool and stout was for the aged. The most famous advertisement of the time for Guinness was of old fellows waiting patiently on an island for a currach to arrive with a delivery of a key of porter, just like you’d wait four minutes in the pub for the pint to settle properly. ‘Tá siad ag teacht,’ was the other famous line of the time.

Wisdom

However, I loyally drank Murphy’s stout, also known locally to some as Blackpool Wine, a typically Cork exaggeration of its prowess. It wasn’t until I moved to Dublin as a 21-year-old that I started on the Guinness, only because conventional wisdom deemed it impossible to get a good pint of Murphy’s in Dublin. It didn’t travel well, and even if it did, the Dublin barmen didn’t know how to pour it properly.

Of course there was experimentation with other drinks during my (whisper it) school and university years. We went through a phase of rum and black chasers with our pints at one stage (I have no idea where that fad came from but it most certainly was not advertised). We used to also drink ‘snakebites’, which we believed to be a particularly potent mix of lager and cider, half and half in a pint glass.

Here’s a confession I hope my children don’t read: I started drinking regularly during my Leaving Cert year and, as they know, I did that exam when I was still 16. I was just 17 when I went to UCC and much of my early years there were centred on the since (sinfully) demolished Western Star pub, Dennehys (also gone), the Courthouse Tavern, the College Bar and various other establishments.

My drinking had nothing to do with the advertisements I saw or read in that time (and I was an avid reader of newspapers, especially the free copies of the various papers that I read in the students’ union centre of the Boole Library when I was too hungover to go to lectures). It was all to do with the culture of the era. Drinking was what everyone did to fit in. It was how you met people (especially girls) around the campus.

It was what I grew up with. My father used to go for a couple of pints most nights (and some evenings my mother would go with him for a ginger ale, because she didn’t like alcohol). When I was old enough I went with him and I’m glad that I did because it helped the conversation between us (with an age gap of 50 years between us). Drinking was part of growing up, rightly or wrongly.

Now, I’m a parent to four teenagers and a pre-teen. The eldest is 18 and legally entitled to drink. She does, much to my chagrin. It irritates me because I rarely do so now, having a very different attitude to alcohol than I did when I was younger, but, to the best of my knowledge and in fairness to her, she seems to know her limits. She and her 16-year-old sister were both at the three days of the Longitude festival last weekend but, somewhat to my amazement as well as my gratification, they were home before 11pm on each evening and were well able to hold a sober conversation with me. And they said they had loved it each day.

It is very clear to me that the peer pressure to drink is much the same now as it was for me 35 years ago. Peer pressure and the cultural environment: as far as I’m concerned those are the key elements when a child or young adult starts drinking alcohol. The advertising they see is far down the list of influencers. The only advertising I ever worried about at their age was not for an individual product, but which offered drink at a price I could afford. (By the way, I didn’t smoke, despite the widespread advertising of cigarettes at the time; I refrained from this because I didn’t like how it affected my breathing, and I played lots of sport, which led to lots of drinking after training and matches. Plus, it was too expensive, using money that could be spent on drink.)

A few years ago we had a Communion or Confirmation party in our house. There were loads of children and their parents in the house and at 5pm the television went on to watch rugby’s Heineken Cup final (as it was called then). I remember thinking: what is likely to be more influential on the future behaviour of all these children – that the cup is named after a drink, or that some of the adults, even at this time of day, are well stuck into getting drunk?

Which brings me to my point: the media industry in Ireland – newspapers and broadcasters – is upset about a proposal to bring in legislation that would greatly restrict the amount and type of alcohol advertising that it can carry. The idea is that the restriction would protect young people in particular from starting drinking too early, or at all.

Problems

That the contention is proven is not established beyond doubt, no matter what anti-alcohol campaigners will tell you. Indeed, it has been claimed that in France, where such legislation was established a generation ago, there are bigger problems with teen drinking than ever before. And there are World Health Organisation statistics to show alcohol consumption in Ireland has fallen by a quarter in the last 15 years, but only by 15% in France in the same time.

There is special pleading, motivated by self-interest, involved in this, but that shouldn’t stop the point being made, and forcefully. The media industry depends on advertising revenue and this (for other products and services as well as alcohol) is declining, especially because of how Facebook, Google and others are hoovering up revenues (and with the ability to hit targeted alcohol ads at individuals, which would not be dealt with by this legislation). These new laws would be greatly detrimental to the financing of the media in Ireland, already under grave pressure, while doing little to counteract the cultural problem of drinking.

I write this as someone who drinks alcohol only very occasionally now and very rarely to the extent where I could be described as drunk. I worry constantly about my children getting drunk and getting into situations where they are too impaired as to react appropriately. I have a low tolerance for drunkenness. I am happy to socialise without needing alcohol as well. For example, I go to GAA and rugby matches all over the country with a friend who doesn’t drink either and we bring our children with us. That example we show them – that they can go somewhere and not need to drink to enjoy the occasion – is far more effective, I hope, than any advertising they may see.