Social Care
The price of alcohol abuse is too high
Alcohol legislation
The last few days have seen a growing consensus within Scotland on the need to do something and do it fast about the growing problem of Scotland’s relationship with alcohol.
The new SNP administration has brought back to Parliament a revised Bill on the issue of minimum pricing for alcohol.
For those not of Scottish descent alcohol has a close stereotypical relationship to the Scots. Caricatures persist of the hale fellow well met Scotsman who always has a dram in his hand. The Scots are supposedly merry, happy drunks of open hospitality and generosity. The image of the drunken Rab C Nesbitt lives on in the popular non-Scottish mentality.
And yes all stereotypes may one day have been acquainted with the truth but the reality of Scotland’s relationship to alcohol is far more tragic than comic!
A recent study examined the impact of alcohol on the Scottish purse and concluded that alcohol misuse could be costing Scottish taxpayers around £3.56 billion per year.
The research, which looked at the impact across the NHS, police, social services, the economy and on families, estimated the total annual cost at between £2.48 billion and £4.64 billion – with a mid-point estimate of £3.56 billion.
It summarised it’s findings as follows:
• Healthcare related costs were put at £268.8 million or 7.5 per cent of the total
• Social care costs were estimated to be £230.5 million or 6.5 per cent of the total
• Crime costs were put at £727.1 million or 20.4 per cent of the total
• The cost to the productivity of the Scottish economy was £865.7 million or 24.3 per cent of the total
• The human cost in terms of suffering caused by premature deaths was £1.46 billion or 41.2 per cent of the total
These are horrendous statistics working out at about £900 per taxpayer. But behind each of these figures is a life, a life devastated and ruined; and alongside that person is often a partner or a child or a community devastated and traumatised and destroyed.
In so much of my experience and work in domestic abuse I hear about the real cost of alcohol. The cost of the perfect husband who lost their job and turned to drink and tigbef into a demon Jekyll and Hyde character ; the cost of the mother who soothes her depression with thd hidden vodka bottle in the soap powder and whose kids feed themselves every day on Macdonalds because mum isn’t well; the cost of the child bruised and sleepless after another night of listening to the rows and intervening between two vuctims.
This is thd real cost of alcohol misuse in Scotland . The real cost not to the profits of the industry but to thd body of the public, not to the taxpayer but to the heart of thd community.
Now I am not here to argue for pratap at the merits of minimum pricing but I an here to plead for something to be done about this cancer affecting Scotland which seems to be getting worse every year I age.
Dr Donald Macaskill
We would be delighted to hear tour views or comments on what gas been said here or indeed about the proposals of the Scottish government to create a minimum price for alcohol.
