27 February 2019
This publication reports on the consumption of alcohol in Jersey and the subsequent effect on Islanders’ health and wellbeing. Topics covered include: alcohol consumption and price; drinking behaviour of both adults and children; alcohol-related hospitalisation and death; and some of the wider social issues related to alcohol such as crime and social security payments.
The report findings include:
- the average alcohol consumption per Jersey adult (aged 15 years or older) in 2018 was 11.8 litres of pure alcohol per year
- while this figure dropped from 16.2 litres per year in 2000 to 11.5 litres per year in 2015, it has remained fairly constant since.
- 11.8 litres of pure alcohol per year is equivalent to approximately 8 pints of beer or 2.5 bottles of wine per week.
- the price of alcohol in Jersey, relative to other household expenditure, increased between 2008 and 2015 but has remained flat since
- drinking behaviour in Jersey differed to that in England:
- 11% of Jersey adults were teetotal compared 20% of adults in England
- in 2017 the average alcohol consumption per adult was 20% higher in Jersey (11.6 litres per year) than in the UK (9.7 litres per year)
- since 2006, the percentage of children in Years 8 and 10 that have never drunk alcohol has increased
- in 2017, rates of alcohol-specific hospital admissions for under 18s were significantly higher in Jersey than in England, for both males and females
- in 2017, 945 hospital admissions were specifically related to alcohol. This number equates to an age-standardised rate of 900 admissions per 100,000 population, significantly higher than the English age-standardised rate of 563 per 100,000 population
- over the three-year period 2015-17, there were 40 alcohol-specific deaths in Jersey; this number represents an age-standardised rate of 12.8 per 100,000 population, similar to the England age-standardised rate of 10.6 per 100,000 population
- alcohol played a role in 14% of all crimes recorded in Jersey in 2018. Of specific types of crime:
- 1 in 4 assaults and more than 1 in 3 serious assaults were recorded by police as involving alcohol
- two-fifths of domestic assaults involved alcohol
- two-fifths of assaults and half of the serious assaults in the St Helier night-time economy involved alcohol
- in 2018, claims due to alcohol-related sickness and ailments totalled £600,000. Almost half of this amount was due to 75 claims related specifically to alcoholism
R AlcoholProfile2018 20190227.pdf