Self-Empowered to Benefit by Reduced Health Outcomes

"The widely held view of the health benefits of alcohol needs revisiting, particularly as improved methods and analyses continue to show how much alcohol use contributes to global death and disability."
Newly published study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

"[ER visits are the] tip of the iceberg."
The bodily harms are often not the biggest issue. It's the impact on the family."
"Our study shows that people aren't meeting those guidelines [maximum daily serving guidelines]. They're not even close." 

"I think all of society, to be quite frank, needs to see this this data."
"It's a responsibility of all of society to look at these numbers. Look how sobering they are and make sure that the trends don't continue."
Dr.Peter Tanuseputro, researchers, physician, assistant professor, University of Ottawa

Patients who visited emergency departments for alcohol intoxication were disproportionately more likely to result in hospital admissions, according to the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. (Shutterstock/SpeedKingz)

"There's a generational effect. Younger women who were drinking in the early 2000s are still drinking more."
Dr. Daniel Myran, family physician, public health and preventive medicine resident, University of Ottawa

"The Ontario government has gone in the opposite direction with such glee and without any embarrassment."
"There was falling alcohol consumption around the time of the financial crisis. But about the time of the recovery, people started to drink again."
"In the past five years, there has been a rapid uptick in deaths and hospital presentations."
Timothy Stockwell, director, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria

Tobacco kills more people [than alcohol]. But having an alcohol addiction is more likely to result in disruption to people's lives. If you include harms to others, alcohol is the most harmful substance out there."
"We're not saying that alcohol shouldn't be available, but that it should be available in a public health model."
Dr. Sheryl Spithoff, family, addiction medicine physician, Women's College Hospital, Toronto

According to a CMAJ study, alcohol-related visits by women went up 86.5 per cent during the study period, compared to 53.2 per cent for men. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

A new study recently published by researchers at the Institute for clinical Evaluative Sciences, The Ottawa Hospital, the Bruyere Research Institute and the University of Ottawa, derived its conclusions by sifting through 2003 - 2016 hospital administrative data province-wide. During that period more than 765,000 emergency room visits took place in the province, all attributable to alcohol consumption. Intoxication accounted for 44.6 percent of visits, with 21.4 percent representing harmful use; 11.4 percent for withdrawal, and alcohol dependence accounted for 10.9 percent.

For women around legal drinking age, alcohol-related emergency room visits were seen to peak, while for men the peak was in their early 50s. Although men remain at greater risk of alcohol-related harm, women are steadily catching up. Women ages 25 to 29 saw an increase of 240 percent in alcohol related ER visit for the years 2003 to 2016. Dr. Daniel Myran, lead researcher for the study, noted that young people drink in more harmful patterns, and are failing to age out of their pattern of consumption.

The study is viewed as yet another tranche of growing evidence linking alcohol with serious social costs. Alcohol is known to cause liver disease, addiction and withdrawal problems, heart damage and cancer. According to Cancer Care Ontario, 3,000 cancer diagnoses annually might be avoided were people to follow safe alcohol consumption guidelines. Alcohol consumption accounts for between two and seven percent of breast cancer cases.

As for the health-care system, the estimate is that alcohol care costs totalled $4.32 billion across the country in 2014, while alcohol-related deaths increased by 26 percent for women and by five percent for men between the years 2001 to 2017. One survey that Cancer Care Ontario reported resulted in the information that one-third of Canadians only are aware they are able to reduce their risk of cancer by reducing their alcohol consumption.

Guidelines for low-risk consumption in Canada are under two drinks daily; ten for a week, or three drinks on special occasions for women -- while for men three drinks a day, 15 for a week, and four on special occasions; figures supplied by the National Alcohol Strategy Advisory Committee at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. A standard 740 mL bottle of wine contains over five servings; a serving of beer is 341 mL.

Dr. Myran points out that marketing alcohol to women has become both targeted and sophisticated. Convincing women that alcohol consumption represents an issue of empowerment for women. "It can be very seductive", he points out pointedly. "It's pretty low down on the agenda politically. You have people in one area collecting revenue and other people who are aware, but who don't have the power", noted Timothy Stockwell. "We are all blissfully unaware that this does so much harm. It's a silent problem. We don't question it much. It's like the industry owns parts of our minds."