According to a review of a recent book “High Society – How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It ” by Joseph Califano (Public Affairs, April 2007), the cost of drug abuse has grown to approximately $1 trillion dollars per year to America. Mr. Califano, the former US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, highlights how substance abuse is a major cause behind America’s most destructive social problems: substance abuse is related to poverty, violent crime, academic under-achievement, high health care costs, family breakdown, child abuse, homelessness, teen pregnancy, work problems, and diseases like AIDS. He also shows the costs of drug abuse in the nation’s criminal justice, health care, and social service systems, and states that this one epidemic is responsible for the death of more Americans than all America’s wars, natural catastrophes, and traffic accidents combined.
http://alcohol-abuse.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_economics_of_alcoholism_and_drug_abuse
All of these issues are also to be found in Australia, in proportion to our population. The cost begins early in life. In Australia maternal alcohol abuse is associated with adverse perinatal outcomes. These include the foetal alcohol syndrome, pseudo-Cushing’s syndrome, alcohol withdrawal in the newborn, and increased risk of perinatal mortality. The incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome has been estimated to be between one and two per thousand live births, or 250 to 500 new cases per year in Australia.
During childhood, we also have problems with underage drinking. The sight of a mother screened on television news recently, trying to revive her fourteen-year-old son in a Sydney High School following a school class drinking bottles of whiskey, disturbed many viewers. Research shows that more young people are drinking alcohol, drinking at an earlier age and increasingly adopting harmful drinking patterns. The 2001 National Household Drug Survey found that the average initiation age for drinking alcohol was 17.1 years, and it is estimated that at least two thirds of the alcohol consumed by young people under 25 years of age poses a risk of short-term or acute health consequences.
A study of almost 400 young people in the manufacturing, building, hairdressing, fast food and retail industries in Melbourne found that these young workers face major health issues including smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. Another study of 300 first year building trades apprentices found that a substantial proportion consumed alcohol at harmful levels. Nearly 50 per cent consumed alcohol more than weekly and just over 50 per cent drank six or more drinks at least weekly. Those who reported that alcohol was available at work reported higher drinking rates.
This obviously leads to many hospitalizations. In Australia the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation (AER) estimated that approximately 72,302 hospitalisations were attributable to the misuse of alcohol and the financial burden of alcohol misuse to the community has been estimated to be $4.5 billion per year, including lower productivity due to lost work days, road accident costs and legal and court costs, as well as health costs.
In Australia drinking alcohol at risky and high risk levels for long-term harm was estimated to have caused 3,290 deaths in Australia in 1997, accounting for about 4 per cent of all male deaths and 2 per cent of all female deaths. The short-term and long-term effects of excessive drinking make roughly equal contributions to these deaths. As a minister of religion I have conducted the funerals of nearly a thousand people. Far too many of them contributed their own deaths, depriving the country of what might have been, and bringing upon their family unnecessary hardships.
Many other funerals have been of victims of someone else’s irresponsible alcohol consumption through road accidents (many innocent victims) and violence by partners that lead to deaths.
In Australia, past studies have found that alcohol abuse plays a significant role in violent crime. It is estimated that about 13% of Australians aged 14 years and over (well over one million people) have been physically abused at least once by someone affected by alcohol, while 16% have had their property damaged at least once. Alcohol has also been implicated in about one-third of sexual assault cases. In 1992, 294 people died from alcohol-related assaults in Australia. Many other innocent people bear the scars of glassings, assault and injury in road accidents.
In Australia thirty-seven per cent of road injuries in males and 18% in females are attributed to alcohol, as are 12% of male and 8% of female suicides. Alcohol is also implicated in 47% of assaults, 44% of fire injuries, 34% of fall injuries and drowning and 16% of child abuse incidents. At least 1% of our population (about 180,000 people) has a close family member with a serious alcohol problem. Isolation, neglect, aggression and disruption within the family, particularly spouse abuse, are frequent. Sexual and financial problems, stress, verbal and physical abuse, separations and divorce are also common between couples where at least one partner abuses alcohol.
A Victorian report in 1988 found that alcohol was definitely or possibly involved in 53% of several thousand reported incidents of family violence. Children are particularly affected by having an alcoholic parent and they are more likely to become depressed, have lower IQ, and be alcohol dependent themselves in the future. In 1992, there were 226 hospital episodes resulting from alcohol-related child abuse in Australia. However, the extent of family problems is probably underestimated because there is underreporting of alcohol-related domestic violence.
Alcohol and drug abuse have reached epidemic proportions: crime, violence, divorce, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, organic brain syndrome, school problems, job problems, mental health problems, family problems, financial problems, etc., are all consequences of alcohol and drug abuse as it ripples throughout society and all of these have financial costs. Police and paramedics and others involved in public security are often assaulted. We need a return of the Summary Offences Act so that violent drunks are locked up for the sake of public safety.
I can never laugh at the antics of a drunk nor can I accept his fellow drinkers praise of how well he holds his drink or what he achieves in spite of it. The rest of society pays the price of his drinking. I have spent fifty years of my life helping people who have willingly drunk alcohol only the find the cost was extremely high. I have worked every week for fifty years with those who were homeless, who lost their mental capacity, whose marriage and professions were in tatters, whose children were on their own, and whose actions in the end added nothing to our nation.
I am sick of caring for unpleasant drunks with watery eyes appealing for compassion, and crying in their drinks to a bar attendant, excusing their violent actions and promising never to do it again. It doesn’t matter what office they hold nor what achievements they have accomplished, if they have the intelligence to know the consequences of their actions and still continue to drink, they are a disgrace to society which has a right to be protected from them.
When I was 8 years of age, I found my father dead in the gutter near our home. He was 38 years of age but suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, hardening of the arteries and brain damage due to drunkenness. That was trauma enough, but over the next 25 years I watched my mother struggle to bring up four children, the youngest only two months old, run a family business was that left without the breadwinner and children who had lost a father. We all paid a price for his drinking. Of course he achieved something, but his failure to discipline himself had consequences far greater than any achievement.
I realise that many people lack the confidence to live without mind changing stimulants. I know that many depend upon alcohol to lower their inhibitions so that they feel better. But their need is no excuse to so behave, as others always bear the cost. May I ask you to examine your own practise and do something positive about it now?
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC
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