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Alcohol Causes One In 20 Deaths Worldwide, Says WHO (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Alcohol is responsible for more than 5% of all deaths worldwide, or around 3 million a year, new figures have revealed. The data, part of a report from the World Health Organization, shows that about 2.3 million of those deaths in 2016 were of men, and that almost 29% of all alcohol-caused deaths were down to injuries -- including traffic accidents and suicide. The report, which comes out every four years, reveals the continued impact of alcohol on public health around the world, and highlights that the young bear the brunt: 13.5% of deaths among people in their 20s are linked to booze, with alcohol responsible for 7.2% of premature deaths overall. It also stresses that harm from drinking is greater among poorer consumers than wealthier ones. While the proportion of deaths worldwide that have been linked to alcohol has fallen to 5.3% since 2012, when the figure was at 5.9%, experts say the findings make for sobering reading.
It's a poor mechanism for population control. It kills those in their 20s disproportionately often. This means the resources used to raise and educate these people are wasted since they died before they could make a sufficient contribution. A more cost efficient mechanism would target those past retirement or the very young or ideally prevent conception in the first place. As others have pointed out, alcohol may even increase the number of unplanned pregnancies, making the overpopulation problem worse.
It kills those in their 20s disproportionately often because those in their 20s tend to die rarely from cardiac arrest, cancer or a stroke.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bad comparison. Countries have tried restricting both firearms and alcohol. We know that banning alcohol goes badly in general (e.g. US prohibition, Islamic countries today). In contrast, over the last 50 years, many countries have substantially increased restrictions on firearms (the UK, Canada, and Australia), and we haven't seen the same problems from alcohol prohibition. Addictive substances built into culture are very different than weapons. There are some decent potential arguments for few restrictions on firearms(e.g. right of self-defense), but a comparison to alcohol empirically doesn't work.