Alcohol: social harm
- Alcohol was estimated to cost Scotland £2.25 billion in 2006/07. Estimated costs for Scotland were: health service (£405 million); social work (£170 million); criminal justice and fire service (£385 million); wider economic costs (£820 million) and human costs (£470 million) (Scottish Government 2008)
- Chart 1 shows that recorded offences for drunkenness in Scotland have been falling in recent years. The number of offences of drunkenness recorded by the police fell from 8,358 to 6,045 between financial years 1998/99 and 2008/09
- There were an estimated 670 drunk driving accidents in Scotland in 2007, a decrease from 820 in 2002 (Scottish Government 2009)
- Chart 2 shows that in 2007, there were an estimated 940 drunk drive accident casualties compared with 1,270 in 2002.
- In 2007, approximately 1 in 10 deaths on Scotland's roads were caused by drunk driving: 30 people killed as a result of drunk driving in Scotland (total number of people who died in road accidents was 281) (Scottish Government 2009).
- In 2008/09, the offender was said by the victim to have been under the influence of alcohol in 58% of violent crime (Scottish Government 2009)
- Of the 132 people accused of homicide in 2008/09, 39 (30%) were drunk and 8 (6%) were drunk and under the influence of drugs. A drink/drug status was not known for 43% of the accused (57 persons) (Scottish Government 2010)
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.