Seanad debates

Thursday, 3 April 2003

Without being a shrivelled old moral prune, our kids are watching "Ibiza Uncovered" on MTV, with teenagers discussing how to get laid or jarred as if that were perfectly normal social recreation. If that is the coinage of their culture and it is being delivered to them as a perfectly acceptable norm of behaviour, can we be surprised if we reap the harvest which emerges from the seeds sown in young minds? There is a Carlsberg advertisement about the perfect nightclub which connects drink with the availability of women and which suggests one enters a different world if one enters the nightclub the Carlsberg company runs. The subliminal messages to 14 to 16 year olds is that there is a great big world out there based largely on alcohol and that their sexual prowess and social acceptability will be largely mediated through alcohol or other drugs. We should ask ourselves if this underlying message is likely to lead to any results other than those we are dealing with. I accept that Government must lead the way in social change but I also take Senator Quinn's point that right across the community, at both parental and individual levels, notions of personal responsibility must inform what is happening.

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