My letter to the Prime Minister

Rt. Hon. David Cameron, MP 10 Downing Street, London SW1A 2AA Dear Mr Cameron, I am writing to you as Chief Executive of the Welsh Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs, a charity that promotes recovery from addiction and advocates sensible and healthy choices with regard to drinking. Firstly on behalf of the council, its helpers and clients, may I applaud your decision to pursue an alcohol minimum pricing policy, peer reviewed studies have shown a clear link between minimum pricing and harm reduction. The council itself has been vigorously campaigning in the Welsh media for over a year to see minimum pricing policies introduced in Wales. I am writing to you, however, to urge you to take a further and perhaps more ambitious step in our country's war against addiction, whilst addressing pricing is important, it will only treat the symptoms of the illness and not its cause. Britain could be described as an alcoholic culture, it has all the traits socially that an addict tends to have on an individual level, our national media, where much of our dialogue about alcohol is had, helps to obscure, to rationalise and to justify our nation's drinking. This is how an addict in denial behaves, until he or she is able or willing to face up to the truth. A national debate about drinking needs to be had, not simply one that looks at the relative 'fairness' or 'unfairness' of pricing, but the reasons behind our huge and excessive alcohol consumption and its massive social costs. We need to have a debate about how and why our national alcoholism is facilitated by the media, and to really question what exactly it is that many British people feel that alcohol can do for them that they cannot do for themselves. Sometimes public institutions from small charities such as the Welsh Council all the way up to the office of Prime Minister are reluctant to address big existential questions like 'the purpose of living'. However, when so many people, at such an alarming rate are running away from that very question, and are using alcohol to do it, we must at least pose this question in an accessible way to the British public. If they do not have a chance to answer it, those who are affected by addiction will continue to be defeated by it. The Welsh Council will be considering ways to take this debate and these questions to the British public and hopefully start the long process of changing British attitudes towards alcoholic drinking, and we would like to invite the Government to join us in this. Wynford Ellis Owen Chief Executive Welsh council on Alcohol and Other Drugs 58 Richmond Road Cardiff CF24 3AT T. 029 2049 3895. E. info@welshcouncil.org.uk www.welshcouncil.org.uk & www.livingroom-cardiff.com