Dear Editor,
It is sickening that the alcohol industry keep using Father’s Day and other events to encourage men to keep drinking. In a week when ‘Men’s Health’ was lamented, the alcohol industry wants to push alcohol sales to fathers while the reality is that alcohol has destroyed fatherhood in many families. And while people talk about ‘which alcohol’ is not as bad as others, the ones that Stabroek News advertised for fathers was consumed by a young father who is normally hard working but did not go to work as he and other fathers were consuming one of the products responsibly. His phone has pictures of his sons, and his father who used to abuse them when they were younger when drunk.
In a more increasingly violent society, when alcohol adds fuel to the violence, the alcohol industry should be held accountable for profiting from that dysfunction and violence. The alcohol culture exists already, there is no need to push it further through marketing. In previous years, the alcohol industry had used some of their non-alcoholic brands to push for Father-Children activities. Maybe those activities cut into the profits and so the industry had to go back to pushing the myth that alcohol makes happy fathers and happy families.
Sincerely,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
