Government has pledged to clamp down on drunk driving and underage-drinkers with a month-long campaign on alcohol awareness.

?He marinated slowly, with his head lowered, sitting, silent, dripping, melting, decaying,? local poet Andra Simons wrote of an uncle who died from years of overdrinking. ?It?s funny how kitchens become parlours for the dying when life is all we have left to devour.?

Yesterday?s speeches at City Hall to start Alcohol Awareness Month had already made an impact on ten-year-old student Quintonio Lema, who said he would never drink and drive.

?I want to live my life,? Mr. Lema said.

?I want to go away and play football and I don?t want to drink.?

Eleven-year-old Dakai Grant agreed that drinking and driving was a killer: ?It?s bad and we might get into an accident and go to hospital and we might die.?

Police Media Spokesman Dwayne Caines said a lot of road traffic collisions were the result of alcohol consumption.

?What you don?t see are the lives wrecked like those bikes and people whose whole standard of living has been changed,? Mr. Caines said.

Police said the emotional toll of drinking in Bermuda was getting greater.

?We have children now being affected very, very deeply by parents who are suffering from the disease of alcohol,? he said.

Deputy Opposition leader Michael Dunkley said the community needed to admit it had a problem with alcohol and drug abuse.

?For our young people sitting over here, the use of alcohol is not a problem if you use it in moderation and you are of age,? Mr. Dunkley told a group of Victor Scott students in the audience. ?Misuse is the problem we have.

?Our young people, you are the future, we cannot have you falling by the wayside because of alcohol and drug abuse,? Mr. Dunkley said.

?If we are going to get on top of this problem of alcohol abuse in our community we need to stop being hypocrites about it. We need to stop saying one thing and living our life another way.?

Chairman of the Bermuda Road Safety Council, Dr. Chistopher Johnson, believed road traffic collisions caused by alcohol were preventable.

?The hardship to families, to communities, to loved ones is really difficult to calculate in human terms,? Dr. Johnson said.

Minister of National Drug Control Wayne Perinchief read a Centre of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention (CADA) proclamation that said 80 percent of students aged 14 to 16 found alcohol was easy to obtain, while 25 percent had consumed alcohol by the time they were ten.

?Greater than 50 percent of persons arrested for either impaired driving or involvement in accidents failed the breath analyser test for the past three years ? 2003 to 2005,? the Drugs Minister said.

?Approximately one in five of Bermuda?s adult residents report that alcohol has had a harmful effect on their physical health. Whereas, statistics show that consumption of alcohol can have a debilitating effect on judgment and decision making.?

CADA chairman Anthony Santucci said the Council on Alcohol was started over 30 years ago by two members of Alcoholics Anonymous.