A very intelligent, socially committed young man murdered a young woman and is now serving a 10-year jail sentence; a worker almost drowned in the river while removing bramble; a 24-year-old woman hit a fellow worker on the forehead with a plank; an unemployed young man with matric exemption knocks at my door and before I answer he has fallen into a drunken stupor on the concrete doorstep; hundreds of people died on the roads during the holiday season, mostly pedestrians; HIV continues to spread like wildfire; incidents of rape and child abuse escalate; friends’ marriages are breaking up. The common thread in all these occurrences is alcohol abuse. Why the silence about this growing scourge in our society? I have listened in vain to hear politicians name alcohol abuse on World Aids Day. During TV coverage of marches against child abuse and rape I looked for posters citing alcohol abuse as a co-respondent and saw none. The Arrive Alive Campaign has clearly linked alcohol to road deaths, but how much of the campaign is providing alcohol education at community level? In the rural area where I live, alcohol abuse is one of the main reasons for rural poverty, but the closest affordable alcohol treatment centre is more than two hours drive away. The student activists of 1976 had clear analysis of the role of alcohol abuse in retarding freedom. They organised against shebeens and bottlestores and tried to change the drinking patterns that prevailed among their elders. Alcohol abuse and its consequences are worse now than then, with our generation of young people part of the problem. Why the silence? Why is so much money poured into marches, posters and banners and none into the real community organising that is needed to deal with alcohol abuse at its source? Marilyn Aitken, Kwa Sani (Underberg), KwaZulu-Natal