Californians pay dearly for alcohol abuse, study reveals

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Alcohol problems cost California $38 billion a year in deaths, injury, health care expenditures, lost productivity in the workplace, crime, and pain and suffering, according to a summary released Wednesday of an upcoming study by an alcohol-industry watchdog group.The Marin Institute, based in San Rafael, relied on data from hospitals, police and highway patrol statistics, Child Protection Services, state vital statistics and other sources to estimate the impact of harmful drinking on society. The study focused on drinking in excess of three drinks per day for men and a drink and half for women.The state's largest county, Los Angeles, had by the far the highest costs for alcohol use at nearly $11 billion a year. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties all generated annual costs in excess of $1 billion. "What we've done, really, is put numbers to a very human problem. People aren't surprised at the numbers because they're living it every day, but they're still dramatic," said Michele Simon, research and policy director for the Marin Institute and a co-author of the report.In addition to the dollar figures, the report found that 90 percent of alcohol-related crime costs come from violent crimes such as murder, assault, rape and robbery and that 26 percent of all traffic collisions involve alcohol, causing some 1,144 deaths.Countering potential criticism that the numbers lack credibility because they come from an advocacy group, Marin Institute officials noted the study has been peer-reviewed and will appear online next month in the academic journal "Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research."The study's authors said they consider the cost figures to be conservative estimates of the problem."We've been very careful to only pick crimes that we thought were caused by alcohol -- not all the ones involving alcohol, for example," said Ted Miller, principal research scientist with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. "We attributed only half of alcohol-involved assaults to alcohol, and that's pretty conservative."Marin Institute officials acknowledged minor health benefits of alcohol for some people at risk of heart disease, but said damage caused by alcohol abuse far outweighs such advantages. The study makes various recommendations, such as increased funding to cities and counties to mitigate and prevent alcohol harm, and higher taxes on alcohol products.A spokesman from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States declined to comment directly on the study because he was unfamiliar with the findings. But he questioned whether responsible alcohol consumers should have to pay higher taxes to cover the costs of abuse.E-mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver(at)sfchronicle.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)