Anti binge drinking measures are destroying our night life.

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis

Friday May 28, 2004 03:06

by Chris Bond

chrisbonn_irl_2000 at hotmail dot com

Anti drink legislation such as the intoxicating liquor act will not make the streets safer and will only curb our liberites.

For the past 14 months justice minister Michael Mc Dowell has been committed to curbing "binge drinking".The methods he has been using in order to do so are rather high handed and will only destroy the fabric of our nightlife in ireland. These methods include restricting access to cheaper drinks at a certain time ie banning happy hour. and moving the thursday night closing time back to 23:30.

These measures are supposed to make the streets safer. yet round my local there is as much fights outside the pub as there ever was. The only thing thats changed is that the entertainment that used to take place on a thursday is cancelled due to the earlier closing times.Banning happy hour only means that a night out is a bit more expensive, as if the price of drink isn`t high enough.

More methods are on the way. there is much talk of the drinking age being increased to 21 meaning that some adults can vote and elect corrupt, smoke and give themselves lung cancers,go off and fight a war and die but are not allowed to go out for a few drinks and enjoy themselves. This is based on the grossly false assumption that all alchohol related violence is caused by those in the 18-20 age group.

This tactics are highly unfair as 99% of people who go out on saturday nights drink rather sensibly and do so to enjoy themselves. why should we curb everyones freedoms when problems are only caused by a small minority.

The government said that these methods would make the streets safer but there has been no evidence to suggest that they are. They have kept silent on the recent effects of this legislation.