Ireland's Public Health (Alcohol) Bill: Policy Window or Political Sop?. (June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Butler, Shane
• Is Part Of: Contemporary drug problems. Volume 42:Number 2(2015)
• Page Start: 106
• Page End: 117
• Publication Date: 2015-06
• Subjects: public health -- alcohol -- policy window -- Ireland; Drug abuse -- Periodicals; Drugs -- Law and legislation -- Periodicals; Drugs -- Physiological effect -- Periodicals; 362.2905
• DOI: 10.1177/0091450915579873
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0091-4509

Abstract

In the wake of the Steering Group Report on a National Substance Misuse Strategy in 2012, the Irish government announced in October 2013 that it had approved a number of alcohol policy measures to be incorporated into a Public Health (Alcohol) Bill to be drafted and enacted as quickly as possible. Against a historic backdrop of previous alcohol policy proposals in Ireland in recent decades, this article looks critically at this recent development with a view to determining to what extent it represents, in Kingdon's terms, a "policy window" for the public health approach to alcohol issues. It is argued that while some specific public health measures may be introduced, the various "streams" of the Irish policy process have not joined together in an unambiguous, consensual acceptance of the public perspective on alcohol, and that the "politics stream" has not to date deemed this perspective to be consonant with the "national mood."