people who do not drink alcohol die too and usually not at older age.
5 millions deaths worldwide is a drop in the bucket, considering things that could be prevented and are not related to people behavior (10 million people die every year of hunger, many are kids) and, most of all, even if we can correlate alcohol to those deaths (it's mostly smocking and BMI) that doesn't imply that if they did not drink they would have lived longer.
People who abuse of substances find a way to abuse of anything legal or illegal.
Car accidents cause around 1.4 million deaths and 50 million non fatal injuries (difference with alcohol being it doesn't need people to abuse of it).
Pollution is responsible for 9 million deaths/year.
Personally, I quit heavy boozing about five years ago and totally quit about two years ago. And personally, I can feel the difference in my mood, my behaviour, my thinking, and the effects on other around me. This applied to very light drinking, like half a pint, as well as heavy drinking - maybe six or seven pints plus extras. I tracked these things in an app so I can look back and correlate moods and drinking. Low sample size, but hey, you work with what you’ve got.
I also still spend a lot of time around heavy boozers and see how a variety of drunk people behave. So I personally see how objectively bad it is before we really get to specific health issues.
I’m not concerned with how alcohol causes death, I am concerned with how alcohol affects life.
On the health issues, the link between alcohol and cancer is clear and global studies also conclude that no amount of drinking alcohol is safe for you. On the basis that drinking alcohol is a pretty binary choice under the direct control of a human, peer pressure aside, this probably explains why people get defensive because it’s an attack - if you like - on their personal choices.
I cannot personally have an impact on whether my personal pollution emissions - cue gags - affect my health, and improvements in my own driving skills have a ceiling limit on my own safety. But booze is easy, not drinking has a disproportionate impact on me personally.
There’s a difference between banning things to improve public health and personally not partaking in them.
Me observing that people are quick to get defensive over alcohol consumption in general is poking fun at a thing called denial. I get that it’s a defence mechanism to defer anxiety, and the moment I quietly mentioned to friends I wasn’t drinking anymore I received the same defensive reaction from a few of them.
> So I personally see how objectively bad it is before we really get to specific health issues.
I understand, but that's your personal experience, which is invaluable, but not in general.
People have been drinking since we call them humans and it hasn't affected our path to progress.
Many wild animals do it too! (elephants, bears, monkeys, squirrels, bats, and many others)
I don't think people defend alcohol despite the negative effects, people think alcohol is not the problem, but the way it is consumed can be.
I've also witnessed personally the difference on how Americans drink alcohol in my city (Rome) and how we drink it. It's always surprising to me that they survive to live another day, they drink as they want to destroy themselves, we usually do it for the fun of it.
Same way a wedding or birthday cake is not responsible for obesity, but most obese people love them and eat too much of it.
> On the health issues, the link between alcohol and cancer is clear
not alcohol per se, but large amounts of it.
Almonds contain cyanide, 10 of them raw and you're in big troubles, 50, you're dead.
people who do not drink alcohol die too and usually not at older age.
5 millions deaths worldwide is a drop in the bucket, considering things that could be prevented and are not related to people behavior (10 million people die every year of hunger, many are kids) and, most of all, even if we can correlate alcohol to those deaths (it's mostly smocking and BMI) that doesn't imply that if they did not drink they would have lived longer.
People who abuse of substances find a way to abuse of anything legal or illegal.
Car accidents cause around 1.4 million deaths and 50 million non fatal injuries (difference with alcohol being it doesn't need people to abuse of it).
Pollution is responsible for 9 million deaths/year.
Should we ban road transport?