According to the 2022 Annual Report - The country's alcohol situation, released by the Addictive and Dependent Behaviour Intervention Service (SICAD), among 18-year-olds, despite the stability of recent and current consumption, consumption increased in 2022 'binge' and drunkenness, which reached the highest values ​​since 2015.

"Also, the prevalence of experiencing problems related to alcohol consumption was much higher in the last two years compared to pre-pandemic years", states the document, which points to 4,538 hospital admissions with the main diagnosis attributable to alcohol, the majority of them related to alcoholic liver disease (67%) and alcohol dependence (21%).

However, there was a small decrease in these hospitalisations compared to 2021 (-4%), remaining below the values ​​from 2018 and 2019 and representing the second lowest value in the period 2017-2022.

With secondary diagnoses, hospitalisations become much higher (40,465 in Portugal and 39,182 in Mainland Portugal), with the figures for the last two years increasing and being the highest since 2017.

In 2022, in the records of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (INMLCF), of the 936 deaths positive for alcohol and with information on the cause of death, 37% were attributed to accident, 31% to natural death and 13% to suicide.

With more residual values ​​came alcohol intoxication (4%), homicide (2%), intoxication due to exposure to other substances (2%) and overdose with illicit substances (1%).

The report also points to a decrease (-15% compared to 2021) in deaths due to alcohol poisoning (35), after the increase in 2021, remaining below pre-pandemic values ​​and being the second lowest value in the period 2016- 22. Around 49% of these deaths were positive for alcohol alone and in 29% alcohol and medication were detected.

Of the 177 fatal victims of road accidents who were under the influence of alcohol, 79% were drivers, 16% were pedestrians and 5% were passengers. More than three in four (78%) of these victims had a blood alcohol level equal to or greater than 1.2g/l (considered a crime).

After the continuous increase in these victims between 2015 and 2019 and the drop in 2020, related to the pandemic, the numbers rose again in 2021 and 2022 (+20% compared to 2021), already reaching pre-pandemic levels, says the report from SICAD, currently the Institute for Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (ICAD).

In terms of indicators of social/legal problems, after decreases in 2020 due to the pandemic, increases also followed in 2021 and 2022, most of them reaching the highest values ​​of the five-year period, the document states.

The same document says that regulatory strategies that are "less restrictive for alcoholic beverages than for other similar products from the point of view of public health" persist, which is in line with studies that show that Portugal "is a country with low control in relation to alcohol and where attitudes favorable to 'laissez faire' policies also dominate".

"This may explain, in part, that despite more restrictive legislative measures in 2013 and 2015, young people's perceptions of the ease of access to alcoholic beverages did not improve between 2015 and 2019 and that a significant number of minors continue to purchase alcoholic beverages, despite being prohibited by law", he adds.

In June last year, the 5th National Survey on the Consumption of Psychoactive Substances in the General Population 2022 already indicated an increase in the prevalence of alcohol consumption between 2017 and 2022 (from 49.1% to 56.4%).