CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking 454
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."
So....far more than guns (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess we better reinstate prohibition. Oh and it must cause health problems, so it needs banning like soda too. Oh yeah, lets not forget "for the children"
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
False. The majority of gun deaths in the US are suicide [pewresearch.org]. Didn't you know that? Seriously?
Re:So....far more than guns (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because people have responsibilities. Or do you think that orphans never happen from suicides? Or that there isn't also a risk to others in that household? I mean, come on.
We don't live in the disconnected libertarian fantasy land, where no one affects anyone else.
Re: (Score:2)
Children are a drain on society, they cost parents money and the contribute no immediately value. They're an investment. It's like putting money into the stock market, then all of it disappears. It would be nice to at least get back the initial investment.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:So....far more than guns (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
...which indicates that the gun was bought specifically for that purpose in those 50% of handgun suicide deaths. It wasn't the other way around - people didn't die because they happened to have bought a handgun, which is the way you phrased it. They wanted to die, so they bought a handgun. I've owned my handgun for over 20 years, and I've not wanted to die, hence I'm not dead by it.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Wouldn't that be the cart leading the horse? If you're committing suicide with a gun in 'under a year' my first thought is that there's a very good chance you bought the gun specifically contemplating suicide.
The suicide problem is huge, and we're not actually losing all that many young adults to anything else. Disease is down, car fatalities are down, other accidental deaths are down, etc...
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.
I agree. Heck, my proposals of fixing schools and our mental healthcare system would actually address suicide as w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Tools for death cause death in exactly the same way that tools for construction cause construction:
It wasn't nearly as easy without them, and we know how much firearm prevalence increases suicide prevalence. The two variables are actually related, and the disconnect you allege is purely hypothetical, and isn't worth discussing in a reality with measurable effects.
Naturally, no one is claiming suicide is a single variable event, but firearm ownership is an actual major variable.
Re: (Score:3)
And don't give me that "fuh fuh culture fuh fuh" crap, we're talking pure statistics here...
Actually, no they are not pure at all. They are contaminated with cultural interpretation. For instance, and my specific point, Japan's patriarchal society counts things very differently than we in the west do. When a stressed-out man comes home, kills his wife and two children, then himself, we call that a "murder-suicide" and count 3 murders + 1 suicide. In Japan they call it "familial suicide" and count it as 4 suicides.
Re: (Score:2)
When a stressed-out man comes home, kills his wife and two children, then himself, we call that a "murder-suicide" and count 3 murders + 1 suicide. In Japan they call it "familial suicide" and count it as 4 suicides.
Do you have any reference source for this claim?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Okay.
Point the first, you're an idiot.
... and you just destroyed any point you might have been about to make by opening up with an ad hominem.
I'm not even going to bother reading the rest of your post.
Re: (Score:2)
"Natural selection" on people who already have children.
Good job.
And that's giving you the absurd notion that because natural selection is the natural state of things, it's something we should strive for.
Re: (Score:2)
Simply not true.
Suicidal ideation isn't tied to handgun purchases. That's also been measured.
Re:So....far more than guns (Score:5, Informative)
Let's reinforce this with some related data:
here we go [nejm.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Meant to post here:
You're so right, states with the highest rates of gun ownership have 60% more suicides total and 4-10x the gun suicide rate. Interesting data, I was really not aware.
Re:So....far more than guns (Score:4, Insightful)
You're so right, states with the highest rates of gun ownership have 60% more suicides total and 4-10x the gun suicide rate. Interesting data, I was really not aware.
Yeah, but now look at the states [insidermonkey.com] in question [about.com] and tell me what else they have in common. Seems to me like people who live in those states also want to kill themselves more often. And I can see why.
Re: (Score:2)
You're so right, states with the highest rates of gun ownership have 60% more suicides total and 4-10x the gun suicide rate. Interesting data, I was really not aware.
Re: (Score:2)
How about data to support the notion I'm presenting [nejm.org]
Non-firearm suicides are pretty consistent with high and low gun ownership, but firearm assisted suicide goes waaaaaaaaaaay the fuck up.
Re: (Score:2)
Your hypothesis doesn't explain the available data [nejm.org]
I know, I know, reusing the same data for everyone in this thread, but they all seem to be making the same argument that is strictly hypothetical, and doesn't account for real-world data.
Re: (Score:2)
And if I were trying assert that other things can't cause deaths, that would be an astounding counter-argument.
Because I'd be pretty dumb to argue that. Because it's a stupid point.
Re: (Score:3)
The comment isn't blaming the guns for the suicide. It's stating the fact that if you buy a gun, you are likely to use it to kill yourself.
Re:So....far more than guns (Score:4, Insightful)
If you buy a gun for self defense then be aware that statistics show the gun is more likely to harm a friend than a foe
It's always tempting to assume that statistics apply to everyone equally, but they just don't.
and that anyone in the home may be tempted to abuse it when not "thinking straight". And if you don't think that the last bit applies to you and your family then you're so utterly immature that you shouldn't be allowed to boil water, let alone wave a hand gun around.
So your basic premise is that no one is qualified to own a gun because they might misuse it, but if they don't believe that they will misuse it, they're not qualified to own a gun? This idea could be applied to literally everything, making you the ultimate arbiter (in your mind) of what it is reasonable to have. In the meantime, I suggest you remove the oven and all the knives from your house, because you might abuse them when not "thinking straight". Sell your car, as well. And then finally, your computer, because you might use Slashdot without thinking at all.
Re: (Score:2)
No it's not, though the gun-fondlers will make that claim. Guns make suicide much too easy, which denies these people a chance to recover from their depression.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Fixed that for you. It's been that way for a long time, ever since Sigmund Freud's nephew decided that calling propaganda "public relations" was much more euphemistic than Woodrow Wilson and Walter Lippmann's term for it which was "manufactured consent
Guns vs alcohol (Score:2)
Typically those killed by guns are not the gun owner itself, where as those killed by alcohol, soda and the like is are the drinkers themselves.
First off, the clear majority of deaths by firearms in the US are suicides. The CDC statistics on this are unambiguous. While not every suicide by gun is by the gun owner a large percentage of these suicides are by the person who owns the gun. Furthermore a death by firearm is still a death by firearm. Does it really matter who the gun owner is? If someone else drives a car and kills someone with it, it isn't really very important that the driver wasn't the owner. Same with a firearm. Someone is dead
Re: (Score:2)
Reducing alcohol-related (or soda-related) deaths simply spreads certain death among other factors. Some other cause will take it's place as the 4th leader. What's the point? Trying to get accidents and natural causes to the top, doesn't seem like a worthy goal for humanity, to me.
Re:So....far more than guns (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I'll.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder if the study included drunken fatal events/stunts that started with the phrase "Hey y'all, check this out"
Re:I'll.... (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder if the study included drunken fatal events/stunts that started with the phrase "Hey y'all, check this out"
No, no, no.
It's "hold my beer and watch this!"
circular definitions... (Score:2)
Wouldn't you say that anyone who dies from drinking was drinking excessively. It's the extreme case definition of excessive.
So What (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care if you drink yourself to an early grave.
I don't care if you smoke yourself to an early grave.
I don't care if you eat yourself to an early grave.
This is all about more gov control, taxes, regulation to protect us from ourselves.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure why your lack of concern of serious public health issues matters more than anyone elses' concern. If premature deaths actually just affected the person responsible, it would be a more tacitly agreeable position. But the reality we face is one where people depend on each other, drunk drivers kill other people, and many people aren't fully aware of the consequences.
Those are all reasons to be interested in alcohol at a policy level. Outright prohibition has problems that are pretty well unders
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's just make the libertarian case against this argument, because I believe I can do so, and deconstruct it without resorting to a strawman.
The argument is that people should be made to be more of economic islands, by never taking care of anyone for them. That is to say, let them die without that liver unless they pay for it.
The problem with this idea is that this kind of lack of empathy for others' suffering isn't natural any more than the communist ideal of no greed is natural.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll drink to that!
Re: (Score:3)
Re:So What (Score:4, Insightful)
"I don't care if you live or die" is fundamentally different than "I won't try to force my perception of healthy living on you".
Re: (Score:2)
I don't care if you drink yourself to an early grave. I don't care if you smoke yourself to an early grave. I don't care if you eat yourself to an early grave.
"I don't care if you live or die..."
This is all about more gov control, taxes, regulation to protect us from ourselves.
"...but I do think you should listen to my opinion."
Well, at least you gave us fair warning! Antisocial people are, paradoxically, the first to give their opinion on how the world should be run.
There's nothing more profoundly anti-social than trying to control other people and force them to live only the way that you want them to.
... " means "I don't care to force my will on you". If you want advice from someone, you're free to ask.
GP has the right idea. "I don't care if you
Reinstate the Prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
It works so well with currently illegal drugs.
Re: (Score:3)
and yet, zero deaths due to 'overdosing' (impossible in practical terms) from taking teh pot (sic).
one is still (federally) illegal and the other advertises freely on print and broadcast media.
I often wonder if we are living in opposite-land, given that our logic is in reverse.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
a lot of the alcohol deaths were due to impairment, not outright overdose. as pot becomes more overt, these numbers will increase too, as they already have in Colorado.
i do agree with your point, and i'm quite sure that pot is still notably safer, but we'll be seeing more and more articles like this on cannabis.
Re:Reinstate the Prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
well, yeah, i agree with you, i'm just commenting that this is going to happen.
and it's not all lies. that's the definition of spin: it's a careful 'interpretation' of truth. the lack of a fast objective test for marijuana impairment is a real problem, as is the synergistic effect of pot and alcohol (anecdote: the one and only time i ever blacked out was the one and only time i mixed (relatively modest) amounts of the two).
these problems don't justify criminalization in and of themselves (imho), but it's no
Re: (Score:3)
the lack of a fast objective test for marijuana impairment is a real problem
No, it isn't. The fast objective test for marijuana impairment is the same as the fast objective test for alcohol impairment. What the cops are moaning about is the lack of a fast objective test for marijuana (Well, THC) levels, which is completely irrelevant because there is no evidence whatsoever either that marijuana impairs driving ability (many drivers actually tested better under the influence) nor as a result is there any amount in your system which can be considered an unsafe driving threshold. So i
Re: (Score:2)
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.
studies have shown that mothers with children in the car are the safest drivers, because they drive conservatively and are very aware of surroundings. try again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe edibles and "concentrate" like wax and honey oil are a totally different ball park. They will certainly fuck you up way past functional with very little (with strong edibles)
Re: (Score:3)
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/... [nbcnews.com]
admittedly, it's retrospective (they are finding more marijuana metabolites in dead drivers than before), but Bayes' formula suggests validity of the inference. p(pot|dead)=p(dead|pot)*p(pot)/p(dead). legalization will definitely increase p(pot), and it might decrease p(dead|pot) in the long run as people and social norms adapt. but as you said, there are a lot of newbs out for now.
part of the problem is that marijuana intoxication is harder to screen for; this is a good thi
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Not to worry, we're going to see the downsides of freely available marijuana in the near term. Hint: concentrating the very potent strains available today (for example, brownies, hash oil or whatever the hell they're calling it these days) can induce a psychosis in some folks. Psychotic folks do dangerous / stupid things.
Is it anywhere near the extent of alcohol related harms? Nope. But don't pretend that ANY drug is harmless.
"Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison.
The dosage makes it
Re: (Score:2)
Both studies illustrate the same problem and it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see the solution.
Ban trees.
Re: (Score:2)
Source?
Re: (Score:2)
It's part of the fascination with alcohol that the US has. It's a very adult thing--so adult you have to be 21 to do it. We don't drink because the booze is good; we drink because boooooooooze and drooooooonk so cool!!!!
Pennsylvania did a study to show that European-style alcohol legislation increases alcoholism. You're an alcoholic if you have 2 drinks in 1 day more than once a week, by the way. In Europe, where 16 year olds can buy beer and parents can order alcohol for their 14 year olds, everyone
1 in 10 adult deaths (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:1 in 10 adult deaths (Score:4, Informative)
I once told a professor that he should change the title of his statistics course to "lying with numbers made fun".
Often times people will cut down a sample or leave out important information in a summary just to promote a point, it's disingenuous.
Re: (Score:2)
lack of context.
Re: (Score:2)
'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics'
Mark Twain (or Benjamin Disraeli or somebody else)
Double Dipping (Score:3)
It is all about the details and perspective really. It is usually really hard for people to understand what is going on behind the numbers as opposed to simply taking the values at face value. There is always the cause VS causality issue as well.
Didn't read the actual article (bc frankly I don't care that much), but I did read the abstract. My thoughts are this: So those deaths that were found to be attributable to alcohol, most of them are not "direct" but rather "attributed". So technically the alcohol di
Re: (Score:2)
This is not so surprising. In his book Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt used econometric techniques (statistics for economists) to show that the most dangerous mode of transportation was not flying, driving, or riding a bicycle, it was walking while drunk.
Fact is, drunk people tend to do stupid things, like walking out in the middle of the road without looking.
Why is it 1 in 10? Well, accidental death in 22-64 year olds is not particularly common. And natural causes, even less so.
Self Medication (Score:5, Interesting)
Having had an alcoholic step dad and grandfather I can say there's many reasons that people drink. Mostly it's one because they want to and if they don't have alcohol they'll use something else smoking, drugs whatever may be available. Alcohol allows people to self medicate and avoid things in life or help to forget things in life, like the fact that their lives didn't turn out as planned. For others it's just an activity because others are doing it around them and they can't stop because they get addicted to it.
Re: (Score:2)
Antidepressants bother me also, sure there may be times when they are useful for reasons that make sense. If your wife cheats on you with your best friend and then takes the car and the house in the divorce... chances are pills won't help.
Re:Self Medication (Score:5, Interesting)
Self-medication with alcohol can be useful, though. I found out a long while back that consuming 1 ounce of liquor (rum, whiskey, brandy) every 2-3 days fixed my clinical depression. I took to occasionally sipping a shot of whiskey out of a sniffer over 3-4 hours, or drinking a beer or two now and then. Didn't need to booze out on it, and it really did last days.
The baseline behavior was a severe downward spiral of emotion in reaction to any negative emotion stemming from a failed expectation or a trivial mistake. The corrected behavior was minor upset bounded to the degree of the original stimulus, with no avalanche effect. I decided 2-3 beers a week was probably safer than Zoloft or such, so did that for a while.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually psychologists call drinking a form of self-medication. Again, having gone through this with my step dad I'm pretty familiar with all of the patterns. Also since your not probably a Paleo Sociologist I doubt you probably knew to any degree with our fore-bearers did, which was probably took things out in an aggressive manner like destroying a village or raping a few women. If you can't find your vice one way you'll find it another.
There are substances, alcohol being one of them, that are addictive
Nice to Know What We're Worth (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Look, if you genuinely believe, as our society tacitly does, that free market economics works, it's implicitly the case that you can put a number on a human life.
We're extremely averse to doing that in verbal speech, but in terms of how we design our economy to work, it's implicitly assumed people are doing that constantly. I'm not even trying to condemn that fact, just suggest it should be acknowledged as a reality of how we conduct ourselves.
Re: (Score:2)
I think we should put numbers on human lives more often, by averting our eyes to it we look away from the human cost of financial crimes and inequities.
For example the average American will generate 2-4 million in their lifetime and will get to keep about half of it (before they pay taxes on that half). Keep that in mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Generates, or receives as income?
Capitalism is an inefficient system. It costs a hell of a lot, and affords greater mobility than other systems. Rich economies can handle that, while poorer economies are better off with feudalism.
In feudalism, serfs retain 25%-70% of their productive output--a large variation over history and geography. Barons provide protection for the serfs, as well as other meaningful services; in modern times, a barony would likely include medical research and treatment, so as to
Re: (Score:3)
The free market has nothing to do with it - any society which institutes non-free policies to preserve life has to face the fact that the things you can do to reduce non-age related deaths greatly outstrip your ability to fund them. Faced with that fact you really have no option but to assign a dollar value to a life if you want to make rational policy decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to get too deep into alternate economic philosophies that are not my own, but not all systems actually use pricing as a tool. Sure, there are still resources, and they're still expended, but those aren't necessarily quantified in the same manner.
Re: (Score:2)
My calculations place the value of a human life at roughly 14% of all personal income in the economy. That's the bottom of the optimal range for UBI, which eliminates poverty while standing up to (and lessening the impact of) economic downturns and not causing hyperinflation. The optimal range appears to be 14%-15%, and I usually call the 15% number for simplicity. The viable range seems to be 11%-20%, but I'm uncertain of that--less certain about the higher end, particularly. Too high causes irreparabl
Re: (Score:2)
article headline sucks ass (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I just burned 80% of my lifetime supply
8 of 9 lives is 0.8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888889% Just sensing the irony as you complained about rounding pi down to 3.
Misleading Headline (Score:2)
The headline implies that alcohol is the sole killer of 1 in 10 adult deaths, but that's just not true. It's 1 in 10 preventable deaths, which is a subset of all deaths that occur. In reality, alcohol probably accounts for 10% of all adult deaths.
Also, they tracked things like car accidents and homicides, which are not deaths caused by alcohol - they're deaths caused by the laws of physics. The only real deaths that can be directly attributed to alcohol are things like alcohol poisoning, cirrhosis of the li
Re: (Score:2)
100% of preventable deaths are caused by poor decisions. We should outlaw decision making!
Degrees of separation? (Score:2)
S-s-synthehol? (Score:2)
Might help. [io9.com]
The question begs (Score:2)
Would deaths of working-age adults go UP (particularly suicides) if they weren't drinking all the time?
No Such Thing (Score:2)
There is no such thing as a "preventable death", at least until we develop some form of immortality. It can only be delayed or accelerated, and the cause can be shifted. Everyone is going to die at some point in time.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, but . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Dear government (Score:2)
Dear Government,
Thank you for informing us. I'm glad you're doing research and informing the public. That's your job. Now please go the hell away. You have an unfortunate tendency to find data like this and then use it to try and control my life. If I chose to drink despite this warning, that's my choice.
we'll see if this cures my ten-year Slashdot habit (Score:2)
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("slashdot.org") {
div, p, h1, span, table, footer, header {
display: none !important;
}
body:after {
content: 'CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking';
color: #FF0000;
display: block;
text-align: center;
font-size: 1.5vmax;
}
}
This is stupid, not "tragic" (Score:2)
Please, stop calling everything that's unhappy a "TRAGEDY". Do you even know what the word means?
Don't want to die of this? Stop drinking. Not rocket science.
For the majority of cases, obesity is not a tragedy, neither are drug-use deaths, nor AIDS-related deaths nor is DRINKING YOURSELF TO DEATH.
All of them are 95% or more self-inflicted. Pathetic? Yes. Sad? Yes, probably, at the very least on a personal level. But tragic? No. Tragedy implies some sort of impersonal force, or a fate one can't fight
Alcohol-related "accident"? (Score:2)
That's self-contradictory. Here's a quote [citylab.com] from the New York Police Department:
An alcohol-related car crash involves criminality and therefore cannot be an accident, logically speaking, if those who enforce the law are to be believed.
I suppose it would be out of the question ... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have to question that number. There are roughly 112 million Americans aged 18 to 44, which is a good enough approximation for childbearing year. If half of those are women, that's 56 million women.
There are 4 million babies born in the US, that means there are 52 million women not having a baby in a given year.
You're suggesting that roughly 2% of eligible American women are getting pregnant, deciding they don't want to be, and having abortions every year? Or that nearly 20% of all American pregnancies are
Re: (Score:3)
Of *course* the drug lords have lobbyists in DC, they just don't announce themselves. Move the stuff off the black market and profits fall through the floor. Even with all the attempts at restricting production the price of pot in Colorado and other (semi)-legalized states is falling.
Given the fact that prohibition doesn't actually work and never has (we can't even keep drugs out of *prisons*, how could we possibly keep them out of a free society?), there are only two rational reasons to attempt it:
(1) Po
Re: (Score:2)
From your level of reading comprehension I'd say you've had plenty already. *Excessive* drinking increases your risk of imminent death. Meanwhile most of the health benefits have been associated with consumption in the ~1 drink per day range. I think traumatic injury/surgery recovery is the only situation where I've heard of high levels of intoxication being potentially helpful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)