Children have a “very bleak future” if the Government is unable to take on the vested interests in the alcohol and sports industries, the country’s largest representative body of community drug projects has said.
Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign issued the damning attack as the Government today publishes its action plan on alcohol, which has sidelined a key proposal from its own expert group to ban alcohol sponsorship of sport.
Activists met in Dublin yesterday to launch of a campaign to push the drugs issue on the Government’s agenda. Afterwards, representatives met drugs strategy minister Alex White.
Fergus McCabe, a Citywide veteran, was a member of the Government’s National Substance Misuse Strategy Steering Group, which after three years of discussions, published a report in Feb 2012. Twenty months on, the Government is publishing its alcohol action plan today.
“We spent years, three years, working on this,” Mr McCabe said. “Four to five previous reports all made recommendations pretty much the same.
“If this Government is really serious, it can’t do ‘Yes Minister’ report after report, because that what’s happened. We have been told to be patient. We have been patient but that has to go. This needs action and leadership.
Source: Cormac O’Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 24/10/13
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