Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health Dr Rishad Seecha­ran said ris­ing al­co­hol con­sump­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­tribut­ing to road traf­fic in­ci­dents, as he con­tributed to a pri­vate mo­tion on the es­tab­lish­ment of an ad­e­quate na­tion­al road safe­ty sys­tem in the Low­er House yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing the de­bate on the mo­tion, Seecha­ran point­ed to find­ings from the Min­istry of Health’s STEP sur­veys con­duct­ed in 2011 and 2024.

He said the sur­veys, de­vel­oped by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, track non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease risk fac­tors with­in the pop­u­la­tion.

“So we have an al­co­hol prob­lem here in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Seecha­ran said.

He said the da­ta showed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in the num­ber of peo­ple who ab­stain from al­co­hol.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, life­time ab­stain­ers among males and fe­males stood at 29.7 per cent in 2011 but fell to 15.4 per cent in 2024.

Seecha­ran al­so said the per­cent­age of peo­ple who con­sumed al­co­hol with­in the 30 days lead­ing up to the sur­vey in­creased from 40 per cent in 2011 to 51 per cent in 2024.

The min­is­ter added that binge drink­ing, de­fined as con­sum­ing six or more units of al­co­hol at a time, al­so rose sharply over the pe­ri­od re­viewed.

“In 2011, it was five per cent, Madam Deputy Speak­er. In 2024, it has in­creased to 12.7 per cent,” he said.

Seecha­ran said the fig­ures showed al­co­hol use had in­creased across the pop­u­la­tion and warned that young peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go were con­sum­ing al­co­hol at high­er rates than their Cari­com coun­ter­parts.

He said WHO es­ti­mates showed 31.7 per cent of peo­ple be­tween the ages of 15 and 19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sume al­co­hol, com­pared with 26 per cent in Ja­maica and 27 per cent in Guyana.

“So we here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, our youth con­sume a lot more al­co­hol than many of our neigh­bours in Cari­com,” he said.

Seecha­ran al­so ref­er­enced glob­al da­ta from the WHO, say­ing 2.6 mil­lion deaths world­wide each year re­sult from the harm­ful use of al­co­hol, rep­re­sent­ing 4.7 per cent of deaths glob­al­ly.

He said one of the mea­sures in­tro­duced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo was an in­crease in tax­es on al­co­hol, de­scrib­ing it as a pub­lic health mea­sure that could pos­i­tive­ly af­fect road safe­ty in T&T.