No Healthy Level of Alcohol Consumption, Says Major Study (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Even the occasional drink is harmful to health, according to the largest and most detailed research carried out on the effects of alcohol, which suggests governments should think of advising people to abstain completely. The uncompromising message comes from the authors of the Global Burden of Diseases study, a rolling project based at the University of Washington, in Seattle, which produces the most comprehensive data on the causes of illness and death in the world. Alcohol, says their report published in the Lancet medical journal, led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016. It was the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability in the 15 to 49 age group, accounting for 20% of deaths. The study was carried out by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), who investigated levels of alcohol consumption and health effects in 195 countries between 1990 to 2016. They used data from 694 studies to work out how common drinking was and from 592 studies including 28 million people worldwide to work out the health risks. According to the report, "27.1% of cancer deaths in women and 18.9% in men over 50 were linked to their drinking habits." The biggest causes of death linked to alcohol in younger people were tuberculosis (1.4% of deaths), road injuries (1.2%), and self-harm (1.1%).

"Worldwide we need to revisit alcohol control policies and health programs, and to consider recommendations for abstaining from alcohol," said the report's senior author, Professor Emmanuela Gakidou. "These include excise taxes on alcohol, controlling the physical availability of alcohol and the hours of sale, and controlling alcohol advertising. Any of these policy actions would contribute to reductions in population-level consumption, a vital step toward decreasing the health loss associated with alcohol use."

Comments

Well Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean... I'm here for a good time, not for a long time.

Re:Well Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to love the quote at the end of the Guardian article, though it really should have been put at the beginning:

But David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, said the data showed only a very low level of harm in moderate drinkers and suggested UK guidelines were very low risk.

“Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention,” he said. “There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving. Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”

Re:Hence the Ban on Pot

[smi.james.th]

Well, parts of the profit are socialised as well. No government will advise citizens not to drink at all because they all get a juicy "sin tax" on the sale of alcohol.

This is only half of the story

[hyades1]

"Alcohol, says their report published in the Lancet medical journal, led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016."

These idiots clearly failed to grasp the other half of the equation. Alcohol probably prevented just as many deaths. Let's face it, if you couldn't decompress with a couple of beers after work, sooner or later you'd wind up skinning your boss with a letter opener and skull-fucking the company president and his snotty secretary to death with the rolled up hide.