Introduction
In the study of contributors to the ‘Global Burden of Disease’, alcohol is said to account for about 4% of global deaths. This comes close to that of tobacco and high blood pressure.
There is no evidence yet of any individual, family, group or population having successfully improved their health by increasing their level of alcohol consumption. There are ready instances where people & populations have worsened their health by increasing their level of alcohol consumption.
top >>
Categories of alcohol consumption
There are three categories of alcohol consumption been defined, as the following show:
top >>
Promoting positive health impacts
A new wave of marketing quotes evidence showing that regular light drinks over 45 years of age without any heavy drinking episodes could have a lower risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) at the individual level.
But this cannot be applied in isolation because not only are daily light drinkers rare in developing countries, there are many diseases, nutrition and health-related problems they may be suffering from, all of which get exacerbated by alcohol consumption.
The available evidence and research papers documenting these findings clearly state that daily alcohol use is not, and cannot be recommended as a public health strategy for CHD protection.
For most countries, the net effect of alcohol on CHD is negative (Room, 2005) particularly in areas of lower mortality from CHD, such as developing countries ( Murray, 1996).
(Source: Gaining Less or Losing More, WHO Report)
top >>
Alcohol & Individual Health
Higher death rates from injuries violence, poisoning, cirrhosis, hemorrhagic stroke, pancreatitis, cancers of oral cavity pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver and breast, and in some cultures suicide, are associated with alcohol consumption.
top >>
Alcohol consumption as a public health hazard
Increasing evidence is linking alcohol consumption with negative impacts not just on the individual consuming alcohol but other people, especially children and vulnerable groups, like women and elderly.
Violence and abuse because of a spouse consuming alcohol affects the child/ren in the family worst. Domestic and street violence also often linked with alcohol consumption take vulnerable groups as victims.
top >>
Alcohol & Injuries
The proportion of injuries
‘linked’ to alcohol use are estimated to be 58.9% of all injuries in India. Violent and deliberate injuries are significantly related to use and form the largest segment of alcohol related injuries.
Benegal et al (2003) Report on WHO Multi-centre Collaborative study - Injury and Alcohol : Emergency Department Study [ Bangalore centre]
top >>
Drink driving
Drink driving is perhaps the most well known public hazard of alcohol in the developed world today. As the leading cause of accidents among youth, most developed countries have stringent laws and penalties for drinking and driving with very high levels of public support.
In 1980, traffic crashes in the United States resulted in more than 51,000 deaths, almost half of which involved persons who had consumed alcohol. About one-quarter of those alcohol-involved fatal crashes involved drivers aged 16 to 21, although this age group constitutes only 13 percent of all drivers (4). Moreover, drivers under 25 caused more than 40 percent of alcohol-involved fatal crashes. In part because of such research, legislation raising the MLDA to 21 in all States was developed, debated, and passed.
Developed countries have shown success in addressing this problem through comprehensive laws and regulations, regular checking and strict, swift penalties, with numbers of accidents due to drink driving reducing over the years. This problem poses a much more serious challenge in developing countries where new motorization rates and weak laws and enforcement is seriously undermining road safety.
top >>
Alcohol & Youth
Young people, especially teenagers, are more sensitive to alcohol use because their bodies and brains are still developing. Studies and findings around the world are conclusively underscoring the dangers of early alcohol use resulting in a much higher risk of dependence and abuse, but the legal age in India for serving alcohol is seldom checked.
Increasingly in India, the young are being lured for alcohol use. They are impressionable, want to be seen as fun, hip, cool and ‘belong’ to their peer groups and friend circles.
Alcohol also provides an “excuse” to behave in an uncontrolled manner, which make ‘controlled’ societies, like in many Asian countries, including India, even more at risk, where alcohol consumption tends to be done without the knowledge of parents and family.
top >>
Trends among women
The little information that exists about patterns of consumption in India, indicate that women consumers can have an equally explosive pattern of alcohol consumption as men. Traditionally, their numbers have been lower, however they makes another popular target group. But persuasive marketing and ‘advancing’ urban lifestyles can make a significant dent in this. A study in Karnataka (Benegal, 2003) reported that there was no major difference between the amounts of alcohol drunk by men or women on any typical drinking occasion.
top >>
Alcohol & Poverty
Alcohol exacerbates poverty and is a hindrance to a healthy development process of a nation and society. Its economic impact is in poorest families, especially the money spent on alcohol is rather a large proportion of the family earnings. This is often underestimated.
“……. one of the most greatly felt evils of the British Rule is the importation of alcohol - that enemy of mankind, the curse of civilization - in some form or another. The measure of the evil wrought by this borrowed habit will be properly gauged by the reader when he is told that the enemy has spread throughout the length and breadth of India, in spite of religious prohibition ; for even the touch of a bottle containing alcohol pollutes the Mohammedan, according to his religion, and the religion of the Hindu strictly prohibits the use of alcohol in any form whatever, and yet alas! the Government it seems, instead of stopping, are aiding and abetting the spread of alcohol. The poor there, as everywhere, are the greatest sufferers. It is they who spend what little they earn in buying alcohol instead of buying good food and other necessaries. It is that wretched poor man who has to starve his family, and he thereby break the sacred trust of looking after his children, if any, in order to drink himself into misery and premature death
(From The Vegetarian (London), February 21, 1891, Chapter ‘Indian Vegetarians’ Part III by M. K. Gandhi)
top >>
Trends in rural and marginalized communities
Marginalized communities (geographically isolated, minorities, tribes, economically or socially deprived communities) are often victims of the harmful effects of alcohol. In these areas, alcohol is sometimes introduced by unscrupulous people for quick profits, exploiting the ignorance of the community regarding harm from alcohol use.
It is projected as an ‘escape’ from the deprivation to which they are exposed. Sometimes employers pay wages in alcohol rather than cash (WHO, 2004). Some marginalized communities, especially tribal communities brew alcohol at home leading to diversion of food grains to alcohol production, further aggravating hunger and poverty. In addition, accidents in an intoxicated state can lead to severe injury or death.
Unfortunately, due to low levels of literacy and awareness, marginalized communities are very severely affected by harm from alcohol consumption, including illicit and spurious liquor.
One example of resistance to violence by tribal and peasant women is the anti-alcohol agitations since the 1970’s, when groups of tribal women would go to "alcohol hideouts" and break all the liquor pots because many men beat their wives after getting drunk.
Various women’s groups in Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Tehri Garhwal and Pithoragarh had waged a war against the liquor trade and alcohol abuse.
In 1992, women of Dubagunta village in Nellore, one of the poor drought prone districts of Southern Andhra Pradesh, organised and agitated to force the closure of the arrack (liquor) shop in the village. Newspapers published this story, and women all over the state marched to arrack shops and sought to stop the auction of contracts to sell arrack.
The press, in particular, Eenadu, the largest circulating Telugu daily, covered the anti-arrack movement that was spearheaded by the women for a year (Gopalakrishnaiah, 1997: 19). But the prohibition imposed by the State in 1993 on arrack was withdrawn in 1994 as the wanted additional revenue generated by liquor sales. The experience, however, gave the women’s groups in Andhra Pradesh new confidence and power to check the alcohol abuse by men in their families, and to prevent domestic violence by alcoholic husbands.
Women’s activities and women’s groups in several parts of the country continue to crusade against alcohol and often bring pressure to close the liquor trade in their communities and villages.
Powerful reminders of the ruin and tragedy alcohol can bring to families, especially poor and marginalized ones, these movements have remained largely local due to a lack of government and wider public support.
top >>
Alcohol and economic development
Nations and state governments often pay more for the costs of alcohol consumption than the revenue they gain from it. Cost estimates for some countries are given below.
Preliminary assessment of excise revenue generated by state governments in India point towards the cost of management of alcohol impacts in the country being higher than the l revenue generated from alcohol manufacture and sale. Thus, if all costs are comprehensively examined and calculated for all events, the economic impact would be much higher even by conservative estimates. In the final analysis, India society might be losing more than it is reportedly gaining.
In a study undertaken by Dr. Vivek Benegal, NIMHANS, showed that the
Karnataka Government loses more money from alcohol related industrial losses & costs of treating alcohol related disease than it gains from excise on beverage alcohol, resulting in a shortfall of above Rs. 975 crores.
Going by the high percentage of revenue alcohol contributes to the state government exchequer, it is highly questionable if governments claiming to be pushing a welfare, social and development agenda should then be so dependent on alcohol to foot their bills, and shouldn’t they be developing alternative, healthier ways to generate revenue.
top >> |
