Ontario Alcohol Treatment

Ontario is a pretty big province and it has some problem related to alcohol consumption and alcohol addiction. Students are particularly touched by this problem. In 2005, there was a study done which showed the alcohol trend within the students in Ontario. It showed that 62 percent of the students in Ontario had drunk alcohol during the past year. This means over 600,000 students who had recently drunk alcohol. There are 10 percent of all students in Ontario that drink alcohol at least once every week.

There is a lot of hazardous drinking happening in Ontario. There are 18 percent of the male students who engage in hazardous drinking compared to 14 percent for the female students. There was also a lot more students doing it when they are older. For example, Grade 12 students have rates of 30 percent when it comes to hazardous drinking compared to only 2 percent in Grade 7. Those are very dangerous because they can lead to other serious problems.

One of those problems that can easily be observed is drunk driving. Drunk driving is a problem worldwide and it also affects Ontario. It is really hard to count the number of lives affected by drunk driving. In the year 2000 alone, there were over 300 people who died in drunk driving accidents. That is one third of all road accidents, and some of those people were below the legal drinking age. There were also a lot of drivers who were fatally injured. Out of those, there were 45 percent who had some alcohol in their blood and there were 38 percent who had a blood alcohol level over the .08 percent limit.

Cost of Alcohol use and abuse in Ontario

The worst cost of alcohol abuse will always be the lives it destroys, but there are also financial costs which the government feels every year. For example, alcohol costs the government of Ontario around 1.5 billion dollars. This accounts for the government funded programs, the law enforcement, the education and the treatment in general of alcohol abuse and addiction. Alcohol abuse costs are the highest compared to any other diagnostic groups.

There are many ways that one can go about to curb drunk driving and alcohol addiction. There are people who seek to help by either providing with alcohol treatments or by educating people so that they don’t consume so much alcohol and so that they be careful not to drink and drive.