Our thoughts

The press release for the journal article1 referred to in our previous thoughtpiece has some interesting statistics relating to alcohol around the world as part of its ‘notes for editors’. The following relate to 2016. Highest prevalence of alcohol consumption Males   Females Country Prevalence %   Country Prevalence % 1 Denmark 97.1 1 Denmark 95.3 2 Norway 94.3 2 Norway 91.4 3 Argentina 94.3 3 Germany 90.0 4 Germany 94.3 4 Argentina 89.9 5 Poland 93.8 5 New Zealand 88.5 6 France 93.1 6 Switzerland 88.4 7 South Korea 91.3 7 Slovakia 87.2 8 Switzerland 91.2 8 France 86.9…

The publication by The Lancet recently of an article discussing the risk to health posed by alcohol1 seems to have put paid for all time to the notion that moderate drinking does no harm or is even ‘good for you’. It has thus caused a bit of a stir in some quarters. The authors found that there was no ‘safe’ limit for consumption of alcohol and that even having one drink2 a day increases the risk of developing one of 23 alcohol-related health problems ranging from injury to liver disease and cancer. While alcohol may have a protective effect in…