Alcohol unmasked

Malta is notching up a disconcerting record in the European Union: to bottom on the desirable and top on the unwelcome. The latest illustration: the drinking habits of our young. Maltese 15- to 16-year-olds are among youths who drink most frequently and more than most in Europe. There can be no consolation that much more is drunk in Luxembourg, or that Irish households spend three times more of their income on drinks than any other country in the EU.

A report on Alcohol in Europe, by the London-based Institute of Alcohol Studies for the EU Commission, analyses the health, social and economic impact of alcohol in Europe. It was released on Friday and drew immediate reactions. It should send a shiver down the spine of our own society. The report shows that Europe is one of the heaviest drinking regions in the world. Some 23 million - five per cent of males, one per cent of females - are dependent on alcohol.

Alcohol kills about 115,000 persons annually, including 10,000 bystanders or passengers, and causes 2,000 murders. It leads to around 60 different types of diseases and conditions, and is responsible for 60,000 underweight births each year. Up to nine million children live in families ravaged by alcohol. Of all ill-health and early death in the EU, 7.5 per cent is due to alcohol, at a cost of €125 billion (€650 per household, or 1.3 per cent of EU GDP).

Malta holds her glass as determinedly and unsteadily as some of the worst of the lot. Excessive drinking among adults is bad enough. Seeing signs of the next generation already heading that way, is worse. The EU report indicates that nearly all 15- to 16-year-old Maltese students have already drunk alcohol at some time in their young life. The Maltese student respondents, on average, downed their first drinks before they reached 13, and became drunk for the first time by a year later.

Alcohol abuse is not a new phenomenon. Years ago the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that alcohol was the biggest regular killer of young men across Europe - over 55,000, aged between 15 and 19. WHO publishes an extensive data base, including an alcohol profile for individual countries. Malta does not come across as a mover and shaker.

WHO says that an alcohol policy advocacy organisation does not exist here. There is no mandatory driver education/ treatment for offenders, and no traditional temperance association. At least self-help movements are "very active".

While, with very good reason, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the growing curse of drug abuse, clearly more needs to be done regarding alcohol abuse, both through unscrupulous selling to the under-aged, as well as by that margin of adults who refuse to drink socially in a mature and responsible manner.

Adults can only be exhorted to behave with due regard to their own health and to others. The young require more focused action, both in the form of protection through enforcement of suitable policies and regulations regarding alcohol selling, and in particular through education. What makes boys and girls experiment with drink when barely in their teens?

Bad example at home and peer pressure are two observable causal factors. There is scope for much deeper analysis to work out a common approach to how to anticipate and at least try to control the problem. The data regarding Malta and the general conclusions contained in the report by the Institute of Alcoholic Studies for the EU Commission might not contain much that is new to our own public authorities and educators in the three sectors of the system.

There should be a new effort, though, to put in place ongoing means to tackle the issue before and through the early teen years. The stark details in the EU report should be publicised, by the health and education authorities in particular, to engender deeper public consciousness regarding a problem that could be growing even now.