{"id":576182,"date":"2010-05-24T01:27:59","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T05:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gordonmoyes.com\/2010\/05\/24\/dr-gordon-moyes-on-the-high-costs-of-alcohol\/"},"modified":"2010-05-24T01:27:59","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T05:27:59","slug":"dr-gordon-moyes-on-the-high-costs-of-alcohol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/576182","title":{"rendered":"Dr Gordon Moyes on the High Costs of Alcohol"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW<\/span>, Dr Gordon Moyes has pointed to the severe social, economic, and health costs to society and family life incurred by the widespread misuse of alcohol. As he explained, “Alcohol and substance abuse are related to poverty, violent crime, academic under-achievement, high health care costs, family breakdown, child abuse, homelessness, teen pregnancy, and work problems.”
\nHe continued, “The cost begins early in life, with maternal alcohol abuse associated with adverse perinatal outcomes such as 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 250 to 500 new cases per year in Australia, which is heart-breaking and preventable.”<\/p>\n

“During childhood we also have problems with underage drinking,” Dr Moyes explained. “Australian research shows that more young people are drinking alcohol, drinking at an earlier age and increasingly adopting harmful drinking patterns. 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.”<\/p>\n

“This heavy use leads to many hospitalisations. 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.”<\/p>\n

“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, and many other innocent people bear lifelong scars of glassings, assault and injury in road accidents.”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

“I 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 to find the cost was extremely high.”<\/p>\n

“I have worked every week for fifty years with those who were homeless, who lost their mental capacity, whose marriages and professions were in tatters, whose children were on their own, and whose actions in the end added nothing to their credit or to our society. It doesn’t matter what offices they have held 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,” he said.<\/p>\n

REV THE HON<\/span>. DR GORDON MOYES<\/span>, A.C., M.L.C.
\nContact: Rev Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC <\/span>– 0407 433 499 or 4389 1860<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, Dr Gordon Moyes has pointed to the severe social, economic, and health costs to society and family life incurred by the widespread misuse of alcohol. As he explained, “Alcohol and substance abuse are related to poverty, violent crime, academic under-achievement, high health care costs, family breakdown, child abuse, homelessness, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}