> It may be a rude awakening for the roughly 80% of Canadian adults who drink.
Probably not, because after the 20% who never drink, there's another 20% who practically never drink. E.g, who never order alcohol on their own but drink to be polite if it's offered to them. I bet the next 20% are also below the new guideline already.
Alcohol consumption is extremely top heavy: a small share of the population drinks a very large share of everything that's produced. It's why, even if you don't worry about a 15% increase in neck cancer risk (I wouldn't), it's such a huge moral hazard for society. The money that's to be made from alcohol - and it's a lot of money, and deeply entangled with industries such as live music and hospitality - comes overwhelmingly from use that's harmful by any sane standard.
I welcome the advice, and I welcome warning labels even more. But we're still tipitoeing around the elephant in the room, which is the economic incentives: how it's a legal way to make lots of money on people wrecking their health and lives.
The thing is, once you take away all the industries thriving on selling products that damage/ruin lives, there's not really much left is there?
It's legal to sell fast food and junk food (crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate, even juice) which in large contributes to the obesity epidemic. It's legal to sell alcohol, cigarettes and other addiction forming substances. It's legal to sell media like video games and TV shows which waste people's time and potential.
I live a 5 minute walk from a city centre with all sorts of shops. I walk past and think most of them offer little to negative benefit to people's lives.
That's a bit like what they call, arson, murder and jaywalking. When you mix together things that we need in moderation to live (food), things whose harmfulness is questionable (entertainment) with two of the biggest causes of ill health and misery - well, that makes alcohol and tobacco look far better than they are.
Not to let the fast food industry entirely off the hook, but alcohol, tobacco and gambling really are in a league of their own when it comes to profits being tied to harmful use.
Being overweight and obese are alongside alcohol and tobacco in the biggest causes of ill health and misery. In the UK 64% of the adult population are overweight/obese, in the states it's over 70% (if I remember correctly).
Alongside a myriad of other issues, the state of my countries national health cripples the healthcare system we have, which obstructs healthcare access even for those who live a healthier lifestyle.
One McDonalds Happy Meal isn't the same as one cigarette, but the much greater abundance of people who eat junk food as opposed to those that smoke or drink (both rapidly diminishing statistics) makes the food industry just as responsible, if not moreso.
Fast food and junk food companies sit on the sidelines providing all of the ammunition, while taking none of the responsibility. They'll do everything to keep their prices as low as possible, weaving their products into traditional life (chocolate Easter eggs, the abundance of chocolate at Christmas, a pack of crisps being a typical component of an office workers lunch) and oppose any taxes and regulation to obstruct their profits.
The most they do is to tell people to eat moderately, and link to a website that nobody will ever visit, but then they make their packaging appealing to children, hold prices low and have their products featured in grabbing distance at supermarket checkouts.
I'll admit entertainment isn't really on the same scope directly, but you still have people wrecking their lives by prioritising it over education/work. That can provide a serious knock-on effect to poverty and ill-health etc. Many video games and social network products (ie. TikTok) are designed especially to be addictive. The creators know their products are addictive, and don't hold responsibility for the impact that may have on a good proportion of their customers.
Being overweight is a status. Tobacco and alcohol are products. Alcohol also contributes considerably to obesity in itself.
I suppose you could limit it to "sugars" to get an apples to apples comparison. But even so, there's the fact that we do need (some) sugars to live, we can do completely without alcohol or tobacco. And sugar has other uses besides direct consumption, a lot of it goes to alcohol production for biofuels, as well as consumption. Sure the sugar industry causes a lot of harm, but they're not quite as dependent on misery for their profitability - and to the degree they are, it's actually also a lot through alcohol consumption.
> The UK government's guidelines on how much it is safe to drink are based on numbers "plucked out of the air" by a committee that met in 1987. According to The Times newspaper, the limits are not based on any science whatsoever, rather "a feeling that you had to say something" about what would be a safe drinking level. This is all according to Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party who produced the guidelines.
> He told the newspaper that doctors were concerned about mounting evidence that heavy long term drinking does cause serious health problems. But that the committee's epidemiologist had acknowledged at the time that there was "no data", and that "it's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't".
UK limits were later lowered, lowered again and then (of course) equalized between men and women even though it was previously recognized that men are physically bigger.
I advise all hackers to follow Voluntary Prohibition as suggested by Tyler Cowen. We need to make alcohol uncool. Your health including important for hackers mental health and brain health will improve. By showing others that not drinking is cool, we help people increase that but also help them not get ruined by alcohol addiction. In the second order thinking, if enough of us do this, and governments become less alcohol happy, we can decrease violence a lot, when we change societies habits. Read Tyler Cowen for studies about alcohol and violence, it is also mentioned in the report.
Is this like 2 drinks a week average, or no more than 2 drinks in any given week? Because I'd say a lot of people are less than 2 average, but more than 2 in a given week
As a Canadian, I think it’s important to provide some additional context. In Ontario, the province where I live, the provincial government has a near monopoly on alcohol sales through its LCBO stores. These stores bring in well over $2 billion of revenue each year (https://www.lcbo.com/content/dam/lcbo/PDFs/AnnualReport/LCBO...). While I know there are arguments for this like “if people are going to drink anyway, the government should control and benefit from it,” it certainly sends mixed messages. The LCBO even advertises to promote alcohol consumption. Even worse, the sale of alcohol doesn’t offset the costs of alcohol to governments, according to this study on a government website: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/reports-publ...
i appreciate what appears to be the truthiness of all the new alcohol advice, but i am curious what the actual repercussions are supposed to be other than 'bad'.
reminds me of the 'drugs are bad' southpark lecturing:
if that's even worth 1% of our global toxic masculinity problem, we need to go to zero alcohol stat. but there seems to be very little in the way of specific conclusions about just how detrimental alcohol is.
e.g. 2 drinks per week leads to a 5% brain shrinkage per year until your brain is the size of a pea at which point you die - that's 15 years for the average human, so if you started drinking around 18, you'll be dead by 40.
that's something that people can relate to maybe.
global alcohol market is about $1.5T today, growing at 10% a year. sounds like a lot.
but not wearing a bike helmet is supposedly bad, too, but all the safest countries to ride in the world use helmets the least.
20 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 62.8 ms ] threadIt’s now a fact that alcohol has negative effect at any dose. The whole two drinks per week is once again a purely arbitrary number.
At least, the Netherland got it right. Just say it’s unhealthy, recommend people don’t drink regularly and let them do what they want from there.
Any reference for this ?
TFA says this right at the top. Not that i'm too happy about it.
Did this actually decrease alcohol consumption though?
Probably not, because after the 20% who never drink, there's another 20% who practically never drink. E.g, who never order alcohol on their own but drink to be polite if it's offered to them. I bet the next 20% are also below the new guideline already.
Alcohol consumption is extremely top heavy: a small share of the population drinks a very large share of everything that's produced. It's why, even if you don't worry about a 15% increase in neck cancer risk (I wouldn't), it's such a huge moral hazard for society. The money that's to be made from alcohol - and it's a lot of money, and deeply entangled with industries such as live music and hospitality - comes overwhelmingly from use that's harmful by any sane standard.
I welcome the advice, and I welcome warning labels even more. But we're still tipitoeing around the elephant in the room, which is the economic incentives: how it's a legal way to make lots of money on people wrecking their health and lives.
It's legal to sell fast food and junk food (crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate, even juice) which in large contributes to the obesity epidemic. It's legal to sell alcohol, cigarettes and other addiction forming substances. It's legal to sell media like video games and TV shows which waste people's time and potential.
I live a 5 minute walk from a city centre with all sorts of shops. I walk past and think most of them offer little to negative benefit to people's lives.
Not to let the fast food industry entirely off the hook, but alcohol, tobacco and gambling really are in a league of their own when it comes to profits being tied to harmful use.
Alongside a myriad of other issues, the state of my countries national health cripples the healthcare system we have, which obstructs healthcare access even for those who live a healthier lifestyle.
One McDonalds Happy Meal isn't the same as one cigarette, but the much greater abundance of people who eat junk food as opposed to those that smoke or drink (both rapidly diminishing statistics) makes the food industry just as responsible, if not moreso.
Fast food and junk food companies sit on the sidelines providing all of the ammunition, while taking none of the responsibility. They'll do everything to keep their prices as low as possible, weaving their products into traditional life (chocolate Easter eggs, the abundance of chocolate at Christmas, a pack of crisps being a typical component of an office workers lunch) and oppose any taxes and regulation to obstruct their profits.
The most they do is to tell people to eat moderately, and link to a website that nobody will ever visit, but then they make their packaging appealing to children, hold prices low and have their products featured in grabbing distance at supermarket checkouts.
I'll admit entertainment isn't really on the same scope directly, but you still have people wrecking their lives by prioritising it over education/work. That can provide a serious knock-on effect to poverty and ill-health etc. Many video games and social network products (ie. TikTok) are designed especially to be addictive. The creators know their products are addictive, and don't hold responsibility for the impact that may have on a good proportion of their customers.
I suppose you could limit it to "sugars" to get an apples to apples comparison. But even so, there's the fact that we do need (some) sugars to live, we can do completely without alcohol or tobacco. And sugar has other uses besides direct consumption, a lot of it goes to alcohol production for biofuels, as well as consumption. Sure the sugar industry causes a lot of harm, but they're not quite as dependent on misery for their profitability - and to the degree they are, it's actually also a lot through alcohol consumption.
https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/drinking_made_it_all_...
> The UK government's guidelines on how much it is safe to drink are based on numbers "plucked out of the air" by a committee that met in 1987. According to The Times newspaper, the limits are not based on any science whatsoever, rather "a feeling that you had to say something" about what would be a safe drinking level. This is all according to Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party who produced the guidelines.
> He told the newspaper that doctors were concerned about mounting evidence that heavy long term drinking does cause serious health problems. But that the committee's epidemiologist had acknowledged at the time that there was "no data", and that "it's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't".
UK limits were later lowered, lowered again and then (of course) equalized between men and women even though it was previously recognized that men are physically bigger.
I advise all hackers to follow Voluntary Prohibition as suggested by Tyler Cowen. We need to make alcohol uncool. Your health including important for hackers mental health and brain health will improve. By showing others that not drinking is cool, we help people increase that but also help them not get ruined by alcohol addiction. In the second order thinking, if enough of us do this, and governments become less alcohol happy, we can decrease violence a lot, when we change societies habits. Read Tyler Cowen for studies about alcohol and violence, it is also mentioned in the report.
[0] https://ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-01/Canada%27s%20Gui...
reminds me of the 'drugs are bad' southpark lecturing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeprIqxrDQo&t=14s
smaller brain? ok, sounds bad.
if that's even worth 1% of our global toxic masculinity problem, we need to go to zero alcohol stat. but there seems to be very little in the way of specific conclusions about just how detrimental alcohol is.
e.g. 2 drinks per week leads to a 5% brain shrinkage per year until your brain is the size of a pea at which point you die - that's 15 years for the average human, so if you started drinking around 18, you'll be dead by 40.
that's something that people can relate to maybe.
global alcohol market is about $1.5T today, growing at 10% a year. sounds like a lot.
but not wearing a bike helmet is supposedly bad, too, but all the safest countries to ride in the world use helmets the least.