Research shows alcohol ban cut violent deaths

Although alcohol is not the cause of violence, experts say it is definitely a major contributor to violence.

This follows a study which revealed that the nationwide alcohol sales ban led to a sharp drop in violent crimes, indicating a strong link between alcohol and aggressive behaviour in society. According to criminologist Dr Guy Lamb, alcohol has been proven to play a fundamental role in various kinds of violence including interpersonal violence, attempted murder, murder and also gender-based violence (GBV).

“And what we also know is that in the South African context, from the studies that have been done at hospitals in trauma units, that there is the common trend of both victims and perpetrators having high levels of alcohol in their blood.”

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Lamb also said alcohol played quite a prominent role in GBV as it had been proven to be a big factor in much sexual and physical violence. It also tended to promote aggressive behaviour.

The study, which was published last month, revealed that the booze ban helped reduce injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the nine weeks of the ban. This meant that 120 fewer people died every week from injury-related causes, the study found.

The study said: “Our results underscore the severe harm that alcohol can cause and point towards a role for policy measures that target the heaviest drinkers in society. “One of the primary causes of injury-induced mortality is interpersonal violence.

“Therefore, to shed further light on one potential mechanism that could be driving our main results, in this section we examine the impact of the July alcohol ban on three outcomes related to interpersonal violence.”

This was based on the data collected by the South African Police Service during the three-month period from 1 June, 2020 to 31 August, 2020 in three categories: homicides, assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm and rape.

Meanwhile, Sidwell Sehoana of the Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training said while lack of alcohol was not the only reason GBV reports decreased during the ban, it was certainly a major role player in the reduction in calls.

“We also need to understand that if you’re intoxicated you don’t think straight.

“There are also some things that you can’t apply more thinking around,” he said.

“We are not saying there was no GBV at the time, but we can say there was a decrease. This shows that improved regulation of alcohol is needed in our country.”

However, researcher and project consultant on gender-based violence at the University of Johannesburg Lisa Vetten said if the research was aggregated by gender, it would reveal that in terms of GBV, the only statistics that dropped were those pertaining to violence among men around the nation and not GBV.

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“The number of men being admitted in hospitals decreased in that time. The number of women being admitted increased.

“So if you do not disaggregate the data you will conceal what is happening to women because of the drop in men [being admitted to hospitals],” she added.

The report, however, also revealed that the cause of death distribution was different for men and women. The ratio of men to women dying from homicide was higher than the ratio of men to women dying from injuries caused by road accidents.

“Third, we know from the existing literature that men and women display markedly different patterns of drinking behaviour in many countries, including South Africa,” the report added.

“For example, World Health Organisation reports in 2019 found that heavy episodic drinking was five times higher among men in comparison to women in South Africa in 2016.

“Together, these factors could lead to a differential effect of the alcohol sales ban by gender.”

• reitumetsem@citizen.co.za