Slashdot Mirror
CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking
An anonymous reader writes: According to new research from the CDC, 9.8% of deaths in working-age adults (22-64 years old) in the U.S. from 2006 to 2010 were "attributable to excessive drinking." This makes excessive drinking the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. The study included deaths from medical conditions, such as liver disease and alcohol-induced strokes, as well as deaths from alcohol-related events, like car accidents, homicides, and fall injuries. However, it did not account for cases where excessive alcohol consumption was a factor in contracting conditions like AIDS, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, so the count may actually be higher. Many western states with low population spread out over a large area showed the highest alcohol-related death rates, while states from the east coast and the midwest tended to be on the lower end of the spectrum. The study also tracked years of life lost, which is higher for alcohol-related deaths than for most other types of death. Researcher Robert Brewer said, "One of the issues with alcohol that is particularly tragic is the extent to which it gets people in the prime of their lives."
Drink to that.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
1 in 10 deaths, huh? That's a bold statement considering the huge qualifications on it:
* 22-64 years old
* preventable
So the actual number is much less than 1 in 10, not much more as the summary says.
Whoa. Hold your horses there pal. They are most likely to be the gun owner(and their immediate family). It gets pretty extreme in some specific measurable cases. People like to frame it in terms of murder, since that appeals to more peoples' moral systems more directly. But suicide is the single biggest measurable concern vis-a-vis firearms.
For example: for the first year after purchasing your first handgun, that's the single most likely cause of death in your life, approaching almost 50% of deaths.
I feel like it would be extraordinarily intellectually dishonest of me to accept handguns as public health issue, and not alcohol. They are both serious concerns and need to be acknowledged as they are, not stewed in pots of rhetoric.
This does not deserve to live on Oprah, much less Slashdot. Not on Fox News, not on Rush Limbaugh, not on Howard Stern, not on Jerry Springer. On its own, exactly as it stands, it would set a new standard for outright stupidity in any legal jurisdiction that has yet to legislate pi = 3.
Oh, but wait, there's a footnote: preventable deaths among working-aged adult Americans. THAT'S NOT FUCKING FINE PRINT. My credibility circuit assigned six zeros (0.00000% chance of being true) before I managed to read the next line.
In all the many long years I've been here, I can not recall a single story headline that revolts me to this degree. I was reading recently Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics by Michael Ignatieff. At some point during his election campaign he said something stupid about the Middle East. His campaign manager pulled him aside and explained to him: "Politicians have nine lives. You just burned eight."
I have a finite amount of all-caps to expend on Slashdot outrage. I just burned 80% of my lifetime supply. Next time I resort to all-caps, I'll never post here again.
the articles on pot will be biased beyond all belief. the US won't admit that they were wrong, all along. never admit you were wrong: that's the government's motto. plus, there is too much money involved in arresting people, jailing them (for-profit jails!) and stealing their assets in immoral property grabs.
there will be more car crashes due to mothers yelling at their kids in the back seat, cell phone use and inattentive drivers (not stoned) than pot users, but I do expect lots of SPIN trying to convince us of how evil the devil weed is.
just don't believe it. its all lies.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
But how many births are caused by excessive drinking?
I am not making any statement on gun control (not derailing an article about drinking deaths) other than that there isn't a comparison that's both simple and reasonable between gun control and prohibition.
The one thing they both have absolutely in common: the implicit assumption that inanimate objects are the cause of social problems, and the belief that controlling those inanimate objects will magically make social problems go away. Perhaps you can see how childish this viewpoint is?
The way I see it, the underlying cause of the social problems is a form of energy. It doesn't ever really go away, it just changes form. Guns and booze happen to be powerful, readily available tools allowing this energy to express itself. It can't be done, but if you somehow could make absolutely 100% of all guns and booze disappear overnight, you would find that this energy will move on to the next most convenient methods of expressing itself. Perhaps stabbings and abuse of some other drug would rise. Perhaps some other, unforeseen methods would emerge.
What no one really seems interested in doing is really understanding the underlying causes for why people want to abuse alcohol instead of using it responsibly, why people want to shoot either themselves or others absent provocation, and what can be done to transform this energy into something better. Actually understanding and beginning to change this would start with a complete restructuring of governments, corporations, educational institutions, and other institutions to make them adhere to their true purposes and to treat people like human beings rather than automatons. Where it would end, I couldn't tell you.
The real obstacle is that no one with the power to move in that direction has any incentive to do it: the current model is too profitable for them. But blaming our problems on objects that have no volition and no desire of their own certainly makes for a great distraction! It lets us waste time debating frivolous non-solutions with no hope of convincing "the opposition" of anything, meanwhile we avoid all these uncomfortable questions about the way we live, whom that serves, and precisely how we were taught to live that way.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein