Everybody in Scotland sees the misery caused by a binge-drinking culture that rots brains and bodies. So any ideas on how to stop this rot — showing young drinkers in particular that drink doesn’t have to be consumed in industrial quantities and followed by a fight - are welcome.
Step up Lewis Macdonald, the deputy health minister, who has suggested spending £500,000 on an advertising campaign to exhort people to opt out of buying rounds in pubs. Cue outrage from Aberdeen’s Excise Licence Holders Association, castigating Macdonald for meddling with “part of Scottish culture”, followed by histrionics from Alex Johnstone, the Conservative MSP, who described the idea as “manipulative and dangerous”.
Sectarian chanting is also part of Scottish culture, but I doubt we would want to preserve that. As for the proposed advertising campaign being “manipulative and dangerous”, if only it was. The reality is that it is a waste of money, just like most other governmental billboard and television finger wagging.
After spending billions on safe-sex advertising, latest government-backed research reveals 38% of Britons aged between 16 and 24 still don’t use any form of protection when having sex with somebody new.
It also showed that 53% of young Scots have had five or more sexual partners and 5% have had more than 40. More than 40 partners by the age of 24! Where do they find the time? And have the girls ignored that other multi-million pound campaign, the one linking promiscuity with sexually transmitted diseases, cervical cancer and infertility? The advertising war against smoking has also failed. My husband, along with millions of other people, no longer notices the “Smoking kills” warning on each packet, and despite the ban on smoking in public places, young people are still taking up the habit. I see them along our back lane, some clearly experiencing their first puff. Left to myself I would force them to smoke the whole packet, one cigarette after the other, until they were sickly green and then start them on cigars. If that didn’t put them off, nothing would. As for the advertising war on drugs — what a joke.
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I’m not saying government- sponsored billboards are not read. They are, but by the wrong people. People like me read this hectoring. Young people are too busy gazing at their iPods. If they do glance at it, they scoff.
This latest “don’t buy a round” gimmick is misdirected. The executive is mainly concerned about young people’s appalling drinking habits, but youngsters do not so much buy rounds as get themselves bevvied up on vodka before they leave home.
The idea they will sit in a pub preparing to use one of the lies Macdonald has suggested to get out of buying a round is risible. To these antisocial drinkers the whole point of a good night out is to get smashed into oblivion. To spend money suggesting ways of avoiding a round is like advising somebody on the niceties of driving a car when they only fly aeroplanes.
I am not suggesting there is no peer pressure among drinkers or denying that many people might benefit from not drinking so much. Certainly, buying a round can be a form of pressure, since the very phrase “my round” does not just indicate it’s your turn to buy the drinks, but also shows you are bonded with your fellows.
There is also a kind of equality in the knowledge that the evening will cost everybody the same. Stopping drinking before putting your hand in your pocket is considered bad form and a source of watercooler grumbling.
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But even here I would suggest Macdonald’s intervention is not helpful. People do not react well to this kind of nannying. Somebody trying to quietly cut down their drinking will now be seen by their peers as a patsy.
What’s more, suggesting such people should lie to their companions fails to get to the heart of the problem. If the Scots are intending to drink less, they must say so openly. Such an honest declaration would have an effect on others that executive preachers could never match, however much money they spend.
What those in power always fail to appreciate is that as a weapon of mass-behavioural change, governmental advertising doesn’t work. They clutch at it, I suppose, because the advertisements they commission show the world they are doing something.
With alcohol abuse costing Scotland £1 billion every year, I sympathise with this desire for action. I just wonder if anybody has ever pointed out that the definition of madness is when you carry on doing something that has already failed and somehow expect this time you will get a different result.