THE pansies at the Council on Alcohol & Drug Abuse (CADA) are the Major Irritant of the Week.

The other day I was chatting with Cathy Belvedere, executive director of CADA. I was surprised to learn she could no longer speak to the media. All calls must now be forwarded through a third party, a local minister. Apparently, Cathy protested too hard about the plans to put alcohol on the ferries and now she's being punished. (My words, not hers.) Now the committee don't trust her.

I hate to get Cathy in further trouble, but I find this situation horrendously offensive. Cathy is the executive director and they don't trust her to speak for herself? All the people Cathy has helped over the years ought to call the local talk shows and let the world know why Cathy deserves to speak for herself.

It's interesting to note that in 2001 CADA's mission statement read: "CADA is a non-profit agency working together with community partners providing prevention and intervention services in alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, by influencing and advocating healthy lifestyles in individuals, organisations and the Bermuda community."

How can Cathy advocate for a healthy lifestyle if she can't speak to the Press? It's apparent that CADA really wants a drone to recite meaningless drivel that doesn't upset the corporate sponsors, probably the local liquor companies.

Over and over we hear that alcohol takes more lives and destroys more families than any other drug. So why should we want it on the public ferry boat? It's illegal to walk around with an unbagged bottle of beer in a public place like a park, so why should the public ferry be any different?

I'm sure the decision to gag Cathy was made by a committee of well-meaning corporate suits. They know everything about running a company, so therefore they should know everything about running a charity. It's the same thing, right? Wrong. A business is about making money. A charity is about compassion.

I imagine that when the CADA board of suits read this, they'll be up and arms. They'll scramble to blame someone, most likely Cathy, then me for all their problems. But the only one to blame is themselves. Their mandate is to educate the public about living a healthy lifestyle. How can they be doing this, if they've gagged the people who are supposed to carry out this mandate?

I grew up in a family where alcohol was not considered part of a healthy lifestyle. I remember when the National Drug Commission (NDC) put out a full-page advertisement claiming that the children of abstainers (people who don't drink) were just as likely to become alcoholics as the children of alcoholics.

I showed this to my grandmother, an ardent abstainer. "Your parents don't drink, are you an alcoholic?" she demanded.

"No."

"Does your father drink?"

"No."

"Are any of my children alcoholics?"

"No," I had to admit. She went on to recite all the people we know who are abstainers. Were their children alcoholics?

"No."

"Well," she said, "then where'd the NDC get the statistic from?"

I had to shrug, because I didn't know.

Every time I turn around the agencies that are supposed to be dealing with the very real problem of substance abuse on this island are being all pansy and toting "moderation" as the key. Apparently, marijuana is bad because it's a "gateway drug". Surely, alcohol is the gateway to just about every problem on the face of this earth?

And who's to say what's moderate? I knew lots of people in college who thought if they didn't pass out and they could still remember their last name, they were drinking moderately.

Nobody has any problem decrying fat and calories in food, so why is it so hard to suggest people cut back on the booze? Is it perhaps that the NDC is afraid of offending their sponsors? Who are their sponsors, I would like to know?

CADA certainly won't be getting any of my dollars or goodwill until Cathy's mouth is unzipped. But then I'm not a liquor company so my opinion probably doesn't matter.