2nd December 2002
Father Gabriel Daly is a man I admire very much and I had the good fortune to hear an Advent Sermon by him recently. Forget complaining about how secular Christmas has become, he said, it was originally a mid-winter festival in the cold northern climes to cheer people up. Christians took it over to celebrate the birth of Christ and there is no harm in having a secular and a religious feast. Let us enjoy both.
But what on earth will our celebrations be like if it consists of nights out like the appalling one chronicled by the Prime Time team and shown on television recently. Now most doctors and nurses have worked in Accident and Emergency at some stage but the present workers should not have to put up with the clientele they receive nightly. Teenagers drinking themselves into oblivion, brutal unprovoked attacks on passers by and lack of any sort of knowledge as to whether sexual intercourse had taken place or not, not to mind if it was consensual, are common occurrences now.
We need no more investigations or departmental reports. As one who voted in favour of the extended opening hours hoping we might become more like continental drinkers, I feel they should be reversed at once. They can be reintroduced if we get some sort of control over the situation, or rather if some people get control over themselves.
Alcohol advertisements on television should be banned immediately. Most promote alcohol as a way to make oneself more sexually attractive and are directed at teenagers. A young girl I know told me she was in a pub recently and there was a promotion on for Bacardi Rum. Samples, the same as one gets for chicken nuggets in supermarkets, were being given out free by young girls. The Prime Time programme pointed out that many drinks now are aimed at young women and are sweet and deceptively unalcoholic to the taste. Once I had a young woman patient who used to come in to me at 9.30 a.m. smelling like a Christmas pudding. When I tackled her about this she told me what she was drinking and had no notion how strongly alcoholic they were. So many doctors who work with sexual assault cases tell me to forget the spiked drinks, it is plain old alcohol that is the problem. Remember "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker".
International HIV/AIDs day coincided with the First Sunday in Advent . A London GP on Channel 4 News said we should stop going on about HIV/AIDs and talk about syphilis - it is everywhere, he said. He made it sound as though one could contact it with any sort of activity from the knees up. Genital warts are also rampant and condoms are no good to prevent these was another bit of advice he gave.
All that was left was smoking. I have been to a cigarette smoke free pub in a city where smoking is illegal in any public places - Ottawa. And this appears to be the situation that will pertain in more Canadian cities soon. Seeing that I had gone to the pub in the interest of research for Minister Micheál Martin as well as having a drink I decided I had better ask the staff how the introduction of the ban some months before had affected them and trade.
The young student who served me said the staff loved the ban. It had not affected trade at the tables where most people were eating as well as drinking but the bar trade had suffered. Right enough there was one man only at the bar while I was there and room for at least twenty. Some people, my informant told me, did go out for a drag on a fag every now and then but the cold weather was putting a stop to that.
There was no smoking in the hotel in which I was staying and the only people I met out in the cold were three colleagues from Europe attending the same meeting as I was. The meeting was in the Parliament building and there was no smoking there, of course. The cash crisis in the Canadian health service was one of the reasons it was decided to get tough about smoking, it being the cause of so many health problems, and I think our Minister will have to be much tougher, too. I doubt the possibility of enforcing the ban in pubs when food is being served. It will be a bit like when I used to say to women smokers who developed thrombotic problems on the contraceptive pill that they should give up the cigarettes or the pill. I can never remember even one woman saying she would give up the cigarettes. The pubs will just give up the food.
It is fine for me, of course, with my non smoking halo around my head but it must be hell for smokers. I went on to see a friend in Halifax which is not so strict and after seeing "Bowling for Columbine" (marvellous, don't miss it), we fell into a Greek restaurant which she thought had a smoking area, vital for her as a twenty a day lady. The smoking area, tiny as it had been, had been phased out. Disaster, but she ate her moussaka and then we went off to a sort of speak easy coffee house where smoking appeared to be obligatory. No-one threw me out because of my halo but the smoke was as thick as the last time I was in Madigans in Donnybrook, so there are enthusiasts everywhere despite legislation. But at least the pub staff and I were smoke free in Canada.
Happy Christmas.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
