There has been a noticeable transition from solely focusing on alcohol harms as consequences affecting the individual consuming alcohol to include the perspective of those individuals affected by other’s alcohol consumption (regardless of their own).4,5 These negative consequences include both health and social impacts and can be experienced by an individual known to the person drinking (e.g. family member, co-worker, neighbour) or a stranger.4 The complications of alcohol use have been documented in the literature since at least 1985.6 Many complications arising from alcohol use (both impairment and binge drinking) involve second-hand effects that affect someone other than the person who drinks (e.g., motor vehicle collisions, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect).7 Individual-level second-hand effects of alcohol use can include interruptions to sleep, verbal, physical or sexual abuse.8 Several terms have been used to refer to this concept including, but not limited to: The second-hand effects of drinking,9 social harm from others’ drinking,10 and alcohol’s harm to others.4,11 The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) has reported that the risk of acute outcomes such as unintentional injuries and violence is strongly associated with consuming more alcohol, this increase in risk begins with consuming more than two standard drinks per occasion.7 In Canada, national survey data from 2012, the most recent data available, indicate one in seven individuals aged 15 years and older reported experiencing harm resulting from another person’s drinking in the past year.

Key messages:

• Individual-level alcohol harms are well documented. Second-hand harms, or alcohol’s harms to others (AHTO), refer to negative impacts beyond the individual consuming alcohol.
• AHTO are numerous and generally fit into the following broad categories: physical violence, sexual violence, child abuse and neglect, financial harms, psychological harms, and social harms.1
• Given that AHTO take place in a socio-ecological context in which individual-level factors interact with alcohol consumption context and community-level factors, broad-based and targeted public health measures that consider AHTO risk factors are needed to reduce second-hand harms to society.2 These measures need to equitably address population-level alcohol harms.3
• While there is understanding that an individual’s alcohol use can impact others, there is a need to broaden routine data collection to quantify alcohol’s harm to others and determine the related health burden.