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7 Wider societal costs
7.1 Estimating the wider social costs of alcohol misuse is particularly challenging. Many of the costs in terms of human suffering are intangible and are not quantified in routine data collection. By definition "intangible" costs are difficult to quantify.
7.2 One of the sources of additional societal cost are those incurred by individuals who are the victims of alcohol related crime. Costs from the Home Office estimates of 2005 28 have been applied as far as possible to data and assumptions outlined in section 5 v. These apply related costs for physical and emotional impact on victim; victim services; lost output, health service use and the value of property stolen or damaged. The estimate is £144m. It should be noted that only 20% of the crimes estimated to have alcohol as a key factor (excluding homicide) could be costed in this way.
7.3 In 2006 there were 139 homicides in Scotland. If we assume that alcohol was involved in 40% of them then applying the same methodology puts a value of £51m on those vi.
7.4 In addition an estimate of the value of the value of alcohol related fire deaths has been included. As previously stated there were 24 in 2006. The Willingness to Pay ( WTP) value of avoiding the human suffering attributed to a fatal road injury is applied. 29 This adds a further £23 million.
7.5 In terms of wider costs to society the 2001 Catalyst report for Scotland focused on using the DETR value for a year of life to estimate the cost of premature mortality due to alcohol in the non-working population and estimated it at £217m (£249m in 06/07 values).
7.6 Updating the 2001 estimate for premature mortality in non working population adds another £248m.
7.7 A recent study by Lister et al 30 describes social impacts and intangible costs as those costs which attempt to place a human value on death & disability, based on willingness to pay to avoid such outcome. For England it identified the intangible social cost attributable to alcohol misuse as £16.1bn. This would suggest a figure of around £1.4bn for Scotland.
7.8 The Lister paper also uses DETR intangible "willingness to pay" values to produce estimates for both alcohol related crime and social intangible costs and health social intangible costs but based the costs on willingness to pay ( WTP) to avert a death.
7.9 The WTP approach (para 7.4) attempts to capture the psychological effects of premature death. Estimates of this kind tend to overwhelm the approach taken in 2001 and considerable difficulties still exist in the accuracy and consistency of such approaches. There were no studies found that assess the value that people put on reducing mortality risks associated with alcohol use in the same way as the extensive work carried out for road accidents. (The exception to this is described in paragraph 7.4 where it was judged appropriate to treat sudden death in a fire in a similar manner to death in a motor vehicle accident.)
7.10 Neither the intangible cost of morbidity due to alcohol use or the intangible value of premature mortality is presented here.
7.11 Taken with all the preceding caveats around areas where it has not been possible to provide a costing the overall estimate underestimates the true cost to society of alcohol use and misuse.
ASD -Health
April 2008
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