Public Health and Regulatory Policies, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Int J Drug Policy. 2011 Mar;22(2):109-19. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2010.10.008. Epub 2011 Jan 15.
Alcohol causes a considerable criminal burden on the Canadian society. The purpose of this study is to estimate the avoidable burden and avoidable costs of alcohol-attributable criminality in Canada for the year 2002.
The impact of the following six alcohol policy interventions relative to baseline costs obtained from the Second Canadian Cost Study (a cost-of-illness study) were modelled: taxation increases, lowering the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) legal limit from 0.08% to 0.05%, zero BAC restriction for all drivers under the age of 21, increasing the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 19 to 21 years, a Safer Bars intervention, and brief interventions. In addition to the six interventions that reduce alcohol consumption, we also modelled one intervention that could increase alcohol consumption and alcohol-attributable costs: the change from a government monopoly to privatized alcohol sales. The effect of these interventions was modelled for the Canadian population older than 15 years of age with the exception of BAC restriction and MLDA, which were modelled for the age group 19-21.
Results revealed that the intervention which appears to be most effective in preventing drinking and driving incidents in Canada was lowering the BAC level. This intervention was estimated to reduce this type of alcohol-attributable crime compared with the baseline scenario by 19.1%. The Safer Bars programme was found to be the most effective measure to avoid homicide and other violent crimes (reductions of 3.4% were observed). Brief interventions were observed as the most effective measure to avoid other alcohol-attributable criminal activities, estimated at reducing them by 2.6%. The results also indicated that substantial increases in all types of criminality examined in this study could occur if all Canadian provinces were to privatize alcohol sales.
This study demonstrates that the implementation of proven effective population-based interventions can reduce alcohol-attributable criminal burden and its costs to the Canadian society to a considerable degree.
酒精给加拿大社会造成了相当大的刑事负担。本研究的目的是估算 2002 年加拿大因酒精导致的可避免犯罪的负担和成本。
对以下六种相对基线成本的酒精政策干预措施的影响进行建模：提高税收、将血液酒精浓度（BAC）法定限制从 0.08%降至 0.05%、将所有 21 岁以下的驾驶员的 BAC 限制为零、将最低法定饮酒年龄（MLDA）从 19 岁提高到 21 岁、安全酒吧干预措施和简短干预措施。除了六种降低酒精消费的干预措施外，我们还模拟了一种可能增加酒精消费和酒精归因成本的干预措施：从政府垄断向私有化酒类销售的转变。除了 BAC 限制和 MLDA 之外，这些干预措施的效果针对 15 岁以上的加拿大人口进行了建模，BAC 限制和 MLDA 则针对 19-21 岁的年龄组进行了建模。
结果表明，在加拿大，降低 BAC 水平似乎是预防酒后驾车事件最有效的干预措施。与基线情况相比，该干预措施估计可将此类酒精归因犯罪减少 19.1%。发现安全酒吧计划是避免杀人案和其他暴力犯罪的最有效措施（观察到减少了 3.4%）。简短干预措施被认为是避免其他酒精归因犯罪活动的最有效措施，估计可将其减少 2.6%。研究结果还表明，如果加拿大所有省份都实行酒类销售私有化，所有类型的犯罪都可能大幅增加。
本研究表明，实施经过验证的有效的基于人群的干预措施，可以在相当大的程度上减少加拿大社会的酒精归因犯罪负担及其成本。
