Freeloaders

This week the British Medical Association made its clearest and most timely statement to date on the issue of Britain's alcoholism crisis: "We cannot afford to keep spending millions of pounds in today's economic climate on mopping up the after-effects of an alcohol problem that the government should tackle with a greater emphasis on preventive measures." In essence, the burden that mass alcoholism is placing on the NHS is unsustainable and is pushing our hospitals to breaking point and the medical establishment knows this full well. The government knows it too, as does the alcohol industry - the more powerful of the two lobbies and the one the government chose to back. This week the BMA called once again for minimum pricing on alcohol, a strategy proven to reduce alcohol related hospital admissions in Scotland and a 'crackdown on irresponsible marketing practices' (when one considers that alcohol is normally at the top of most harm indices, causes a million assaults per year, is connected to most cases of child abuse and neglect and sees a fifth of forty somethings admitted to the emergency wards annually, it's not too controversial to suggest that all marketing practices are irresponsible). The reason for the BMA's concern were the shocking statistics released that show an addiction epidemic amongst 40-50 year olds; town centre binge drinkers place a burden of some £22 million a year on the NHS, but home drinkers in their 40's attend hospital so frequently that they drain £670 million from the public coffers. Thinking about things in financial terms is of course revealing and it is useful in giving us a clue to the scale of the problem (one that is 30 times the size), but we should not let these costings distance us from the human beings at the centre of this tragedy. The largest percentile of victims of the alcohol industry are poor, nearly 40 percent come from low income brackets and most appear to be home drinkers, able to engage in their addiction away from the challenges of social situations. In this time of austerity, when public subsidies for libraries, sports centres and buses are being cut, the alcohol industry curiously seems to be exempt from such belt tightening measures and still has one enormous tax-payer funded system to assist its operations; the NHS. Most businesses that generate harmful waste products in the pursuit of profit or who pollute are legally obliged to clean up their messes or are levied green taxes to pay for their impact on the environment, not the drinks industry though. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill cost 11 lives and about $50bn for BP. What price the thousands of lives lost each year in Britain to alcohol abuse? The alcohol industry privatises the profits from their activities and socialises the costs for the rest of us to pay, financially and spiritually. If the alcohol industry were ever forced to pay its way and to contribute to paying for the damage it caused it would collapse, an indication that the costs of alcohol far outweigh the benefits accrued to private business or society. Wynford Ellis Owen CEO Living Room Cardiff