The IMO has called for an end to the indifference to the damage being done by the scourge of alcohol, drugs and gambling addictions, proposing some wide-ranging proposals across a number of areas, writes Lloyd Mudiwa.

While most news reports headlined with the IMO’s call for an immediate ban on sports sponsorship by the alcohol industry, the IMO’s Position Paper on Addiction and Dependency is wide-ranging in approach to the problem of addictions and recommends a number of measures against all the main problems, including drugs and gambling.

Launching the paper, IMO President Dr Ray Walley told journalists that since the 1960s, the consumption of illegal drugs and alcohol had increased to a point where more than one-quarter of all Irish adults now state they had used an illegal psychoactive substance recreationally and more than half of all Irish adults were classified by the WHO criteria as harmful drinkers. In recent years, gambling addiction had received greater attention, as the ubiquity of internet access provided problem gamblers with an ever-present means of exacerbating their disorder, he added....