The World Health Organisation tells us that we are a nation of alcoholics.
Figures published by the World Health Organisation disclose that the average Briton drinks more than 13 litres of pure alcohol a year – higher than the European average and equivalent to nearly 500 pints of beer.
This despite figures that state that consumption is falling. Make your minds up, people.
The report also shows that deaths from liver cirrhosis have risen in recent years, and that 1 in 15 men in Britain is an alcoholic.
Much like the NSPCC’s made up statistics, this is far too high to be taken seriously. They appear to have redefined what an alcoholic is. It is not someone who drinks a lot. It is someone who cannot control their drinking, someone who has a crippling, addictive dependence on alcohol to the point where they cannot function without it and eventually stop functioning because of it (and, yes, I do know what I’m talking about here) – there is a big difference between the two. The claim that one in fifteen men in the UK suffers so, is absurd beyond belief and I don’t believe a word of it.
The WHO recommends that all countries implement tough policies on drinking in order to improve public health and reduce the costs associated with treating alcohol-related disease.
Well, being authoritarian bastards, they would, wouldn’t they?
“One of the most effective is raising alcohol prices by raising taxes. This has the added benefit of generating increased revenues. A recent analysis of 112 studies on the effects of alcohol tax increases affirmed that when taxes go up, drinking goes down, including among problem drinkers and youth.”
Ah, yes, if you disapprove of something you suggest taxing it even more. For our own good, of course. And, it seems, these people have not come across the Laffer curve. Tax something enough and you generate a demand for untaxed products. So, far from increasing revenues, they actually decrease them as people find other ways to get their booze without filling the government’s coffers. Don’t believe it? Ask Al Capone. Why do they think people cross the channel to buy their fags and tobacco (Mrs L hasn’t paid UK duty on tobacco for nearly a decade)? It always amuses me – well, it would if it was actually amusing – when I see yet another example of puritans who fail to learn from history and demonstrate a staggering inability to comprehend basic human nature.
Ultimately, the amount of alcohol consumed by you, me and Dupree is no business of the WHO, government or anyone else for that matter.
However separate figures that strip out teetotals (14.4 per cent of Britons) show that drinkers in Britain consume an average 15.6 litres of pure alcohol. Women drink 9.50 litres and men manage 21.5.
On this calculation, however, Britain is out-drunk by about half the countries in the world including Muslim majority nations such as Egypt and Iraq.
Oh!
I did a quick calculation.
According to the BBC website on health there are 2 units of alchohol in a normal point of beer at 500 pints a year thats 1,000 units a year or a little over 19 units a week.
The government says that you can drink up to 21 units per week.
So, by the look of it avargae intake is less than the upper limit to stay healthy – according to government figures.
Redefining the term ‘alcoholic’ is a very dangerous move indeed – for alcoholics and those around them. If it is used to embrace anyone who drinks up all their units, then that provides any actual alcoholic with yet another self-reassurance or self-justification for their destructive behaviour. And yes, I know what I’m talking about too…
By the by, how do they calculate the number of teetotalers? There’s you, Longrider, and me, but who are all the others? Or do they get there by adding the number of staff of Alcohol Concern + Muslims, subtracting the number of MPs and dividing by the coefficient of Pukka Pies?
Splendid grasp of statistics (and the lies you can expose) there, the WHO is another one of these organisations which we would leave pronto if I were in charge.
I suspect they make up the number of teetotallers, just like they make up the rest of their statistics.
“This has the added benefit of generating increased revenues.”
Translation – we can squeeze more milk out of our cattle, and there’s not a damned thing they can do to stop us.
I didn’t have the heart to click through to the original article, but I daresay there is some stuff there about “lost productivity” and other such nonsense.
Remember it is the WHO who is behind the smoking bans being implemented across the world through the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Whats next?
A WHO Framework Convention on Alcohol Control?
Yup. I always found it “interesting” that prohibition turned a vicious scumbag like Capone into a kind of folk hero.
Mystic Meg’s got nothing on you.
Don’t give ’em ideas…
XX “ A recent analysis of 112 studies on the effects of alcohol tax increases affirmed that when taxes go up, drinking goes down, including among problem drinkers and youth.” XX
What about Sweden and Finland in the 60s and 70s where the OPPOSITE happened?
Or do “records only go back to” the day they bought a computer?
Records go back precisely as far as they need to to make the point of the person making the point, and not a day further as that would usually prove them wrong.
These studies always make me think I’m not drinking enough. Trip to Tescos tomorrow.