There is growing disquiet that recommendations contained within the National Substance Misuse Strategy Steering Group Report could threaten the future viability of music festivals and events. Among the many controversial recommendations contained within the report is the ending of drinks sponsorship of sports and other public events, including music festivals by 2016.

While representatives of the bigger sporting events, including rugby, GAA and soccer (along with cultural events such as the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival) publicly aired their concerns at such a move on a recent edition of Frontline with Pat Kenny, the concerns of much smaller but no less important festivals have yet to be heard.
John Cleere is Festival Director of the highly-regarded and long-running Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Festival, a prestigious event that over the years has seen the very first Irish appearances of acts such as Ryan Adams and Ray Lamontagne, among many others. Last year’s headliners included Drive-By Truckers, while this year’s event sees appearances by Alabama Shakes, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis and BBC broadcaster, Andy Kershaw.
In the past, the festival has been supported by Carlsberg, while in more recent years it has been sponsored by Smithwicks, who have long been associated with Kilkenny city.
“We wouldn’t have a hope of surviving without the help we get from Smithwicks,” Cleere told Hot Press. “It’s absolutely vital for us – we couldn’t put on any sort of decent programme together without it.”
He says he doesn’t envisage the Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Festival continuing if the mooted ban goes ahead. “Put it this way,” he states, bluntly. “If they brought in a ban on drinks sponsorship in the morning, I’d be cancelling this year’s festival straight away. It simply wouldn’t happen.”
Meanwhile, a row has developed within the Steering Group, with one member publicly dissenting from some of its recommendations. Fionnuala Sheehan, CEO of MEAS (Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol in Society), who operate the successful Drinkaware.ie website and highly visible advertising campaign, told Hot Press that she had to fight her way onto the Steering Group after being initially excluded. She also stated that some of the members of the group were “ideologically prejudiced” against MEAS and were unwilling to acknowledge the contribution of MEAS to tackling alcohol abuse.
She went on to say that these members were opposed to having any positive reference to the work of MEAS/drinkaware.ie in the report, and she spoke about the “refusal of the Working Group to acknowledge the contribution of our organisation and to accommodate our considered view on a number of key issues within the body of the main report.”
As a result, despite the fact that the organisation agreed with many of the recommendations contained within the report, MEAS/drinkaware.ie were forced to issue a Minority Report outlining their concerns on some of the key issues.  
“The Steering Group was very much drawn from the health sector,” Fionnuala told Hot Press. “Alcohol abuse is an area of concern to us all and the group should therefore have had a much wider representation. There tends to be a dogmatic approach when something like this is left to the health industry – and as it’s an emotional area, it’s important that we have sound research on any recommendations, which wasn’t always the case.”
One of the group’s recommendations, which is opposed by MEAS, is the suggestion to reduce the ‘low risk’ weekly drinking guidelines. “It’s made without regard to scientific evidence,” says Sheehan. “There is plenty of research to show that the current guidelines are not credible amongst Irish consumers, particularly young adults. In fact, they are dismissed as too low and nannyish. We are convinced that the proposed further lowering of the guidelines will be entirely counter-productive.”
MEAS also opposed the so-called “Social Responsibility Levy” proposed, which Sheehan says will, in effect, be a new consumer tax in order to fund a new awareness campaign operated by the HSE.

ALCOHOL AND PREGNANCY
Is the Steering Group ideologically biased against the alcohol industry and alcohol consumption in general? At 94 pages, the report is too long and unwieldy to dissect here in any detail, but several sections appear to take a moralistic, judgmental tone, rather than a scientific approach. Take this excerpt, under a section headed ‘Alcohol Drinking In Pregnancy’, which purports to outline harm caused by alcohol to the unborn baby but then appears to include all consumption of alcohol among pregnant women: “An Irish study reported that 54 per cent of women admitted to drinking alcohol following a positive pregnancy test, with 8 per cent of these women consuming more than 50g of pure alcohol per week.”
The use of the word “admitted” in this context lends a suggestion of guilt, of doing something morally or even legally wrong on the part of these expectant mothers. Also, the use of the term “pure alcohol” rather than using the standard drinks measure is peculiar and alarmist, since mothers don’t tend to drink alcohol in pure form (nor indeed does anyone else!) – they drink wine, beer or cider etc., and the alcohol is highly diluted.
Did the authors set out to confuse the public by attempting to disguise the actual amounts of alcohol involved here, especially when you consider that 50g of so called “pure alcohol” per week is less than five glasses of wine? In other words, the vast majority (92%) of pregnant women who drank alcohol consumed less than a small glass of wine a day, say over five days.
To be clear about this: there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that this low level of consumption (less than a third of “recommended weekly limits”) causes any harm at all to the foetus. In fact, there is some evidence to the contrary and this has been borne out by several recent studies, including a long-term study in the UK that followed more than 18,500 children since birth between 2000 and 2002 for their first five years of life.
According to the lead researcher Yvonne Kelly (an epidemiologist at University College London) the study found no evidence of harm from light drinking during pregnancy. “Regardless of the emotive issues, we wanted to look at the science,” she said, adding that, “drinking just a little could also help pregnant women relax. Plenty of recent studies have pointed out the risk of maternal stress to fetal development.”
Fred Bookstein, who studies fetal alcohol spectrum disorders at both the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Vienna said of the study: “It is no longer valid to argue that we don’t know enough about low-dose drinking during pregnancy or that the known effects of binge drinking may penetrate to low-dose drinkers somehow. There is no detectable risk associated with light or moderate drinking during pregnancy.”
Dr Peter Boylan, a former master of the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, appears to agree with this conclusion. He was quoted in the Irish Times as recently as last October as saying he was not aware of any research that suggested moderate drinking during pregnancy would harm a child’s capacity to develop. “There is no evidence to suggest that a moderate alcohol intake harms a baby in any way,” he stated, adding that (as several studies have revealed) there was “some evidence that the opposite was the case – that women who drink moderately during pregnancy have babies with better outcomes in the long-term.”
The authors of the Steering Report, however, seemingly can’t bring themselves to accept the overwhelming evidence that low or even moderate consumption during pregnancy is not harmful. Instead they conclude with the sentence: “There is still uncertainty as to the intensity and timing of the alcohol exposure needed to produce any type or degree of fetal impairment.” Again the language and tone are loaded but the real meaning is: “We haven’t a clue.” Which has to represent a failure, given that Yvonne Kelly’s report is out there... There are serious questions to be answered: why did the report, which claims to concern itself with harmful consumption or “substance abuse”, not to mention “evidence-based” research, fail to distinguish between excessive (and potentially damaging) consumption of alcohol, and low or moderate consumption – which according to the available scientific evidence, poses no risk to the unborn child and may even be beneficial? An effort to pile unnecessary guilt upon already stressed pregnant women, perhaps? Or an ideological bias against all and any level of alcohol consumption?
You decide!