esearch paper arm , tangible or feared : Young Victorians ’ adverse experiences from thers ’ drinking or drug use

Background: Harms from alcohol experienced by someone other than the drinker have received increasing attention of late, but have not been compared to harms from others’ drug use. The aim of the current study is to compare the reported harms that are attributable to the alcohol use of others to those attributable to drugs, distinguishing between different types of harm in order to highlight how reported harms may be influenced by perception and social standing of use of the substance. Method: Respondents aged 16–24 from Victoria, Australia, completed the Victorian Youth Alcohol and Drug Survey (n = 5001), including questions on demographics, drug and alcohol consumption, on the types of harms they experienced attributable to drugs and alcohol, as well as harms they perpetrated after using drugs or alcohol. Results: For both drug and alcohol related harms, reports of harms loaded into two groups using multiple correspondence analysis: tangible harms such as assault, and amenity impacts such as being annoyed by people under the influence. Amenity impacts attributed to alcohol were more likely to be experienced by those who reported drug use and vice versa, while the tangible impacts were more likely to be reported by those who used both drugs and alcohol. Conclusions: Reports of amenity impacts from others appear to be influenced by the perception of the drug in question more than tangible impacts such as assault. Particularly for amenity impacts, the greater stigma attached to drug use may make respondents more likely to consider themselves harmed by drugs than they would when compared to alcohol, something that needs to be taken into account when assessing harms by either alcohol or drugs. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. There are well-established traditions of measurement of harms temming from alcohol consumption and from drug use. In the conext of the burden of disease, there has been substantial work on he contributions of alcohol and of drugs as risk factors to the health f the user (e.g., Lim et al., 2012). Studies in the cost-of-illness traition (e.g., Collins & Lapsley, 2008) have extended the range of roblems covered to include harm at the level of society and major ocial institutions, but have included only a little of the harms or osts specific to others around the drinker or drug user (Room et al., 010). Please note that in this paper the term drugs potentially efers to both illegal drugs as well as analgesics and tranquillisers or non-medical purposes. ∗ Corresponding author at: 54-62 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia. el. : +61 3 8413 8475. E-mail address: sarahc@turningpoint.org. au (S. Callinan). ttp://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.drugpo. 2014.04. 007 955-3959/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Harms attributable to the alcohol consumption of others are common in societies with relatively high levels of alcohol consumption. One study found that 60% of Americans surveyed reported at least one problem attributable to the drinking of others in their lifetime, and 34% reported two or more problems (Greenfield et al., 2009). Compiled results from three Canadian studies found that between 14 and 16% of participants (aged 18 or over) were verbally assaulted and 3–4% were physically assaulted in the past 12 months by someone who the respondent believed had been drinking. Furthermore, 30–33% experienced at least one harm, ranging from being insulted or humiliated to physical assault (Giesbrecht, Cukier, & Steeves, 2010). More than half of the respondents in a New Zealand study who reported being physically or sexually assaulted stated that they believed the perpetrator had been drinking (Connor, You, & Casswell, 2009). Harm from others’ drug use has been less studied. In a population survey in the Nordic capitals of Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo