State of Play on Alcohol In Victoria: F.A.R.E
Alcohol harms
The analysis found that alcohol harms in Victoria are significant. The most recent available data indicates that over a one year period there were:
- 21,460 treatment episodes where alcohol was the principal drug of concern (2012-13);
- 8,349 ambulance attendances in metropolitan Melbourne where alcohol was identified as a contributing factor (2011);
- 29,694 alcohol-related hospital admissions (2010-11);
- 6,768 alcohol-related assaults (2010-11);
- 14,015 family incidents involving alcohol (2012-13);
- 1,932 serious or fatal road injuries during high alcohol hours (2010-11); and
- 1,214 alcohol-attributable deaths in Victoria, which accounted for 3.4 per cent of all Victorian deaths in that year (2010).
According to the AMA National Summit on Alcohol 2014,
- On average, alcohol causes 15 deaths and hospitalises 430 Australians every day.
- The number of Australians killed or hospitalised because of alcohol consumption has increased in the last decade.
- One in five Australians consumes alcohol at levels that puts them at risk of lifetime harm from injury or disease.
- Alcohol has been causally linked to at least 60 different medical conditions. Longer-term health problems associated with risky alcohol use include liver damage, heart damage, and increased risk of some cancers.
- Alcohol is a greater factor than speed, fatigue, weather, or road conditions in fatal road crashes in Australia, and is responsible for more than a third of road deaths. Every year, alcohol consumption is responsible for over 11,000 hospitalisations among young people aged 15-24 years. Each week, approximately one death and 65 hospitalisations among the under-aged (14-17 years) are attributed to alcohol.