Drinkers Harm More Than Themselves – New Study Reveals Alarming Magnitude

New research released yesterday highlights just how much
more harm alcohol drinkers cause to others. The study from
Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, looks at numbers
of years of full health lost – or disability-adjusted life
years (DALYs) shows that harms to others from alcohol
contributes 56% of total alcohol-related harm in Aotearoa
New Zealand (NZ). Most of this is from fetal alcohol
spectrum disorder, followed by road crashes as a result of
someone else’s drinking, and alcohol-fuelled
violence.

“The harm to others from alcohol is
alarming,” says Alcohol Healthwatch Executive Director
Andrew Galloway. “We’ve known for some time that alcohol
causes enormous harm, not just to the drinker, but to those
around the drinker and wider communities – this is one of
the reasons it is NZ’s most harmful drug. But this study
highlights just how widespread those harms to others are,
and how incredibly under-estimated they have been in the
past.”

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD,
comprised over 90% of the healthy years lost. FASD, a term
describing a range of lifelong cognitive, physical, or
emotional deficits caused by prenatal alcohol exposure, is
responsible for 15 healthy life years lost for every 1,000
people. For Māori, the harm represents 22 healthy life
years lost.

The study also sheds light on the
considerable inequities in how alcohol harms others. Māori
experience almost twice the harm from FASD, road crashes as
a result of someone else’s drinking, and alcohol-fuelled
violence.

“This puts a spotlight on how unfair and
unjust our system is,” says Galloway. “Māori are more
likely to have to live in neighbourhoods saturated with
bottle shops and are saturated by more by alcohol
advertising. These are among the reasons we see these
inequitable statistics – with Māori overwhelmingly bearing
the burden of alcohol harm, even those who don’t
drink.”

The study also raises interesting comparisons
with the second-hand harms from smoking. Second-hand smoke
accounts for 1,989 DALYs compared with the 78,000 DALYs from
the three harm measures alone in this study.

“The
second-hand harms from smoking were a large part of the
drive towards positive public health focussed policy
changes,” says Galloway. “Yet what we see here is
second-hand harms from alcohol are almost forty times the
amount of second-hand harms from smoking. And this isn’t
even including the wide range of other second-hand alcohol
harms that are common, including child maltreatment,
violence and abuse to our health professionals and emergency
department staff, loss of business productivity, or the
community-wide impacts after someone commits suicide under
the influence of alcohol.”

Overall, this study shows
that the harms to others are just as large as the harms to
the drinker, underpinning the importance of accounting for
these sizable harms when developing policy to protect our
communities and vulnerable groups.

“It’s common to
think of the harms to the drinker when thinking about
alcohol, such as cancers, injuries, poor mental health and
so on,” Galloway continues. “But this study is a reminder
that the harms extend much further – and that is really
unfair. More protections around alcohol would mean fewer
road traffic deaths, less alcohol-fuelled violence, and more
babies born healthy. This would help our communities thrive,
and we would all stand to benefit from
this.”

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