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UK Cuts Men's Recommended Weekly Alcohol To 14 Units (theguardian.com)
jones_supa writes: Men have been advised to drink no more than seven pints of beer a week – the same as the maximum limit for women – in the first new drinking guidelines to be released by the UK's chief medical officers for 20 years. They also advise there is no safe level of drinking for either sex, and issued a stark warning that any amount of alcohol consumption increases the risk of developing a range of cancers, particularly breast cancer. David Spiegelhalter from University of Cambridge said: 'These guidelines define 'low-risk' drinking as giving you less than a 1% chance of dying from an alcohol-related condition.'
There is nothing scientific about it, and the medical profession say the change has nothing to do with new scientific data. The sole motivation driving this was to make men equal to female.
As if this bullshit is going to reduce anyone with a penis to change their drinking habits. /s
You must be fun at parties
Don't make fun of the designated driver.
The biggest annoyance here is that we feel we should follow the guidelines - the assumption is that medical guidance should be followed, without taking into account that you are definitely going to die someday so your life shouldn't be about avoiding it at all costs.
If people were immortal except for the effects that might kill us, then yes it makes sense to do your best to mitigate those risks. But we're all going to die after 80 or 90 years of life, so how do you want to spend those years? Starving yourself (mild hunger is best for longevity), eating healthy but borderline boring food, avoiding all mind-altering substances. It doesn't feel like a life, it's hardly exploring the bounds of existence is it? Yes I'm sure some ultra-smug teetotallers will be able to get some sad satisfaction from this news, (yay other people's misery), but given that the human race has *always* sought out chemical mood alteration, perhaps it should be something we accept as a basic need. If not alcohol, then what? There are a bunch of essentially harmless synthetic drugs that we criminalise for no good reason, that at the very least would be better than alcohol.
Discourage alcohol, but then accept that people will take drugs of some sort, so what should you encourage?
Wait, US is that country where you can't even drink in the streets and people resort to making fake IDs (!) to drink.
I think that may be why you are afraid of such "totalitarian" policies as you reading or hearing on TV or radio about a recommendation once in a while. What such evil "government" intrusion (if somehow physicians and University of Cambridge count as "the government").
The reality though is it's you Americans who are fined and jailed for drinking and jay walking and so on, AND you get little "socialized" healthcare. So I don't think oppression and healthcare are actually related.