FASD grossly under-diagnosed and under-reported

FASD grossly under-diagnosed and under-reported

Canada’s Justice spending exceeds $11 billion annually. When I administered a police services computer system, including Occurrence Records, more than 80% of police calls involved alcohol or other drugs. If only half the Justice budget were attributable to alcohol, then the cost would be $5.5 billion per year. Federal Health Transfers to the provinces are about $20 billion annually. The Provinces claim that amount is less than 20% of the actual health cares costs, the balance coming from individual premiums and taxes, for a total of $100 billion annually for Health Care. If 9.2% of the total health burden is because of alcohol, that would add another $9.2 billion to the annual cost of alcohol. Alcohol taxes generate $3.2 billion per year - an $11.5 billion shortfall in the Justice and Health budgets alone, $350 for every man, woman and child in the country, whether they drink or not. Add to this the alcohol related costs to individuals, families, education, social services and businesses and it become obvious that the beverage alcohol industry only pays a tiny fraction of the cost of the fallout from their products. The beverage alcohol industry has a large vested interest in minimizing the public perception of the real effects of their products. Why are governments so addicted to alcohol? Perhaps they don’t understand mathematics?

Governments have provided only token funding to deal with FASD. In Canada, the federal government announced $11 million (Canadian funds) ($3 Cdn = $2 US) for FASD over 3 years. Virtually none of it has made it to the grassroots where the battles are being fought. Government funding of redundant research projects rather than sustainable action initiatives postpones the necessity of dealing with the elephant in the living room.