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."
Re:So....far more than guns (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: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:So....far more than guns (Score:5, Informative)
Let's reinforce this with some related data:
here we go [nejm.org]