Alcohol: Global
Burden on Health Similar to Tobacco and High Blood Pressure
04 Feb 2005
The amount
of death and disability caused by alcohol globally is similar to
that caused by tobacco and high blood pressure, concludes a review
in this week's issue of The Lancet. Overall, four percent of the
global burden of disease is attributable to alcohol, 4•1%
to tobacco and 4•4% to high blood pressure. Alcohol is causally
related to more than 60 different medical conditions, including
breast cancer and coronary heart disease. In most cases alcohol
has a detrimental effect on health.
The comprehensive
review on alcohol and public health is particularly timely as from
February 7, 2005 new legislation in the UK will permit pubs, bars,
off-licences and nightclubs to remain open 24 hours later this year.
In the review,
Robin Room (Stockholm University, Sweden) Thomas Babor (University
of Connecticut, USA) and Jürgen Rehm (Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health, Canada) assess policy research and options for
alcohol control. Studies have shown that raising the price and reducing
the availability of alcoholic beverages can lower consumption. Using
price elasticity estimates and analysis of UK alcohol related mortality
data the authors estimate that a 10% rise in British alcohol prices
would produce a drop in cirrhosis mortality of 7% in men and 8•3%
in women and a fall of 28•8% in men and 37•4% in women
in deaths from explicitly alcoholinvolved causes (alcohol dependence,
poisoning etc.) Besides price, drinking and alcoholrelated problems
can be affected by restricting the hours and days of alcohol purchasing
and of the numbers and types of outlets. Despite this evidence the
authors highlight the fact that research findings on effective alcohol
control measures fail to impact on policy decisions.
Professor Room
comments: “A stark discrepancy exists between research findings
about the effectiveness of alcohol control measures and the policy
options considered by most governments. In many places, the interests
of the alcohol industry have effectively exercised a veto over policies,
making sure that the main emphasis is on ineffective strategies
such as education.”
He concludes:
“There has been a growing contrast between the treatment of
alcohol in trade agreements and disputes as an ordinary commodity
and the more restrictive treatment of such other commodities as
tobacco and pharmaceuticals, which also entail a public health risks.
In a globalising world of common markets and trade agreements, alcohol
policy is thus no longer only a national or subnational matter.
To reverse the trend, a new international agreement on alcohol control,
along the lines of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is
needed.”
Contact: Professor
Robin Room, Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs, Stockholm
University, Sveaplan, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden T) +46 8 674 7047
This is a press
release from THE LANCET
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