It’s all over the media — alcohol is the new killer of Australians. “Alcohol-related deaths and suicides on the rise in Australia,” said Nine. “Alcohol-induced deaths in Australia at their highest in 10 years,” fretted Guardian Australia. Even The Australian, which surely should know better, offered “almost 1600 people died in Australia last year as a result of alcohol consumption — the highest figure in a decade — as fears grow that the pandemic has accelerated a trend of risky drinking amid lax regulation and aggressive booze marketing”.
The source was the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data on causes of death for 2021. And you can’t totally blame journalists: the ABS itself made much of the role of alcohol, issuing a media release headlined “Low death rate, almost no flu but more alcohol-induced deaths in 2021”.
And alcohol-related deaths did indeed go up: “mental and behavioural disorders due to use of alcohol” increased from a standardised death rate of 0.9 to 1.1 per 100,000 population; alcoholic liver disease standardised death rate rose from 3.3 to 3.5; accidental poisoning by alcohol actually fell, but that’s somewhat rarer — the death rate only fell from 0.5 to 0.4.
So did the pandemic accelerate a “trend to risky drinking” as The Australian claimed? Well, if it did, surely deaths would have spiked in 2020, too, which they didn’t — figures between 2019 and 2020 are stable. And anyway — an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare survey showed more people reporting lowering their alcohol consumption during the pandemic than increasing it. That’s backed up by other peer-reviewed studies. Another peer-reviewed study focused on young people found marked reductions in consumption, too.
In short, the “pandemic made everyone drink more” is a beat-up by the media and public health bodies funded by taxpayers to demonise alcohol.
But let’s assume alcohol-related deaths are surging, for argument’s sake. 1600 people sounds like a lot! Does that mean alcohol is a major source of death? Let’s check the rest of the data: heart disease killed 17,000; dementia nearly 16,000; strokes nearly 10,000; lung and throat cancer nearly 9000. Where does alcohol fit? Go through all the causes of death and the most frequent alcohol-related killer, alcoholic liver disease, doesn’t make it into the top 70 causes of death. It’s well below transport accidents, falls (over 6000 deaths), unknown causes of death and brain tumours.
For that matter, there was a big rise in falls in 2021 — about 600 more people than in 2020, placing it just out of the top 10 causes of death — which no one has connected to the pandemic or lockdowns. The media doesn’t really talk about falls, but they cause more than 6000 deaths a year among seniors, and they can be minimised with better interior and exterior design and personal equipment. Yet there’s no anti-fall taxpayer-funded lobby group with a vested interest in constantly talking about falls, so they don’t get much attention.
There was a sharp rise in female genital cancers — indeed, an overall rise in cancer deaths, along with marked rises in the death rates of almost all of the top 10 causes of death of Australians (bearing in mind the figures are heavily skewed by non-Indigenous deaths — Indigenous peoples have much higher death rates and in some cases quite different top causes). In some cases the increases merely take us back to 2019 levels; in others, such as falls, that’s not the case.
Still, it makes for an easy headline to single out the 73rd most common cause of death if people have already been misled into thinking Australians spent the pandemic boozing it up.
Alcohol may not be the direct cause of many deaths, but it contributes to the incidence of many of the causes mentioned, from traffic accidents to some types of cancer.
You are correct in that research points to alcohol as a risk factor for a number of cancers, especially cancer of the liver.
However, this is at least partly captured in the statistics: ” Alcohol-induced deaths are those where the underlying cause can be directly attributed to alcohol use, including acute conditions such as alcohol poisoning or chronic conditions such as alcoholic liver cirrhosis. On average, 71% of alcohol-induced deaths are certified by a doctor. These deaths are primarily caused by chronic alcohol-induced conditions.” It states that 1,559 people died of an alcohol-induced death in 2021. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/causes-death-australia/2021
I think the media does go into a weird moral panic about alcohol. For instance, more people – 1,704 of them – died of drug-induced deaths in 2021 than of alcohol-induced deaths. (“Drug-induced deaths are those which are directly attributable to drug use. They include deaths due to acute drug toxicity (e.g. overdose) and due to chronic drug use (e.g. drug-induced cardiac conditions)”. Opioids were the most common drug class causing drug-induced deaths. Same ref as above).
Given the proportion of the population consuming alcohol is greater than the proportion consuming opioids, this seems like a much more interesting statistic, but I haven’t seen it picked up in the media.
Sorry, “For instance, more people – 1,704 of them – died of drug-induced deaths in 2021 than of alcohol-induced deaths” should read “For instance, more people died of drug-induced deaths in 2021 – there were 1,704 drug-induced deaths – than of alcohol-induced deaths”
The only aspect that rather puzzles and somewhat surprises me about the ‘media’ going into some “weird moral panic” about alcohol, is the fact that by doing so, the media may, to some extent, be jeopardizing their advertising revenue from this rich, influential and powerful source. In the business world, it is all about money, the human dimension is usually of no discernable consequence.
Maybe… As the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity!
Sorry, zero of the cancer deaths are recorded as due to alcohol because they are not “directly attributed to alcohol use”. They are generally statistically attributed to alcohol and the death is attributed to cancer.
Agree, as one presumes the statistics maybe masking alcohol’s broader contribution to death, injury, illness, violence, mental health and other societal harms, pre death, or simply too specific or ‘boxed’ in by definition.
According to WHO, more broadly:
Excellent post Drew.
You, like myself, are only stating the obvious. However, as many of the comments here indicate, the ‘obvious’ needs to be stated and emphatically so.
I’m reading the news about it on Crikey Worm this morning, I was confused why alcohol deaths were talked about it terms of percentage increase, but then others were talked about in absolute numbers. It’s that sort of trickery that may make a good headline but give us little clue as to absolute risks. Bad Crikey!
For example, imagine that in 2020 there was 20 people who died being hit by trams, and only 5 who died in 2019 that way. It’s a 400% increase! Which sounds alarmist if not for the fact that it’s still an incredibly rare occurrence.
The problem with any discussion on alcohol is that consumption is still seen in moral terms. Even when trying to dispassionately talk about consumption rates, there’s always the moral undertones to the statistics, and people on either side of the issue willing to jump on them as vindication for their existing moral position on them. Makes it really difficult to have an adult conversation on alcohol because we have to get past the sensationalism that comes with the topic.
I you want an ‘adult conversation’ about alcohol Kel, I suggest that you read some of my posts on the subject.
See also drastic’s post above too, Kel.
If drastic’s remarks are not those of an experienced adult then I don’t know what would warrant such a description. He recounts personal experiences with those affected by alcohol consumption, rather than offering vague and unconvincing analogies with driving motor vehicles and pedestrians being hit by trams (who were presumably sober at the time?)
“rather than offering vague and unconvincing analogies with driving motor vehicles and pedestrians being hit by trams (who were presumably sober at the time?)”
The analogy was on the difference between looking at relative risk and absolute risks. How was it vague and unconvincing? Since I didn’t have the numbers for alcohol, it’s hard to say what the absolute risk was. Which is my point. Tram was just a thing that can kill (dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die), like alcohol, or bee stings, or angry spouses, or driving a car, or smoking cigarettes. Absolute risk is in the details, which we weren’t given.
It could well be that alcohol is the most dangerous thing to our health in society. But you wouldn’t know it from highlighting the increase in deaths because it doesn’t tell us what the absolute risk is. Nor does it say for that matter much of anything. Trends are only meaningful with multiple data points, as anyone trying to understand climate change will attest. But that’s a long way from the point I was illustrating above in terms of absolute risk.
O.K. Kel, I take your point. You are trying to mount a rational argument (possibly from the point of view of a statistician or perhaps an economist). To me, it is just so obvious that alcohol causes so much damage to societies not only here but in many places across the globe.
How damaging this drug is compared to other legal or illegal substances is far from the main point as far as I am concerned. As drastic points out so succinctly above, the problems caused by alcohol are far from uncommon.
I would be amazed if even amongst the respondents to Bernard’s article on this site, there was no one who did not have a close friend or family member who is not ‘in the grip of the grape’ to some extent.
What I simply do not understand is why you seem to want to reduce the discussion to some clinical debate about”absolute” and “relative” risks. To me, this response is like “fiddling while Rome burns”. How you can so blithely dismiss those issues raised on the CDC site and the experience of someone like drastic, is really beyond me.
However, Kel, if you tell me that you are an economist, all will be clear immediately and I will completely understand.
Not an economist, just someone with an interest in how to think clearly and rationally. That means learning statistics, but really much of that comes from psychology rather than economics.
But, really, what’s the alternative? Trying to follow the evidence as best we can is all we can really do. Shouldn’t we aspire to use the best tools at our disposal for assessing any given topic, including statistics, so what we can use that knowledge to make more informed decisions?
Thanks for that reply Kel. Will you also be collecting statistics and other evidence on the chances that the sun might possibly rise in the east tomorrow morning?
I’m gonna say through induction alone you could say it will, or through abduction that our understanding of the relationship of the earth and Sun (earth rotates on its axis) is settled science. It wouldn’t make much sense to treat that statistically when we have physics to answer that question.
In regards to harms in our society, statistics is a good tool because it allows us a view of what’s going on in broader strokes than we can see from our myopic and limited perspective. Not only that, it allows us to measure effects on our actions.
What do you object to about using statistics to understand the extent to which alcohol is a problem?
Oh Kel, I can see where you are very cleverly and subtlety trying to direct me. The tactic will not work.
Let me state quite categorically and unambiguously that I have no problems or qualms whatsoever about using statistics to understand the extent to which alcohol is a problem in our society. In fact I would suggest that I would be at least as keen as you to see this done. I have a science background and I know the importance of scientific evidence.
However, in relation to the age-old problems caused by alcohol, the damage that it causes is well known. We do not need to start from “the ground up” to reinvent the wheel.
I see a role for gathering statistical evidence to update the situation and to enable us to make comparisons within and between communities. But I think the CDC in America has based its findings on well established statistical evidence.
It was a fair question given the absurdist example you provided above of the sun rising in the east. Not sure what you were getting at beyond trying to show the absurdity of the methodology in question.
It’s great if you think statistical analysis is the way to go. Understanding the effects of alcohol is going to be a statistical thing, as is the case in medicine. The question is, what complaints do you have about the idea I brought up – that we should be talking about absolute risks to better understand the impact of alcohol in our society? Is it that I think people get their personal feelings towards alcohol consumption get in the way of a dispassionate look at the evidence, or that I find the way the media addresses the topic sensationalist precisely because people have strong moral opinions on the topic?
BTW, I have this same objection to the sensationalist way the media addresses anything health related, even when I know it’s in line with the evidence. It makes it so much harder to find good information through the media because the media narratives are too often told through a morally-charged lens. It does us all a disservice – whatever the topic in question and whatever moral feelings one might have on it. Following the evidence is key!
I think Kel that we may be on the verge of finding some common ground.
Let me deal with the main points that you make one-by-one.
Firstly, my excellent (rather than absurd) example of spending time collecting date on whether or not the sun would rise in the east tomorrow, was designed to emphasize the fact that some things have been demonstrated very clearly over millennia. One of these things is the damaging effects of alcohol. So, I do not understand the need to once again investigate aspects of this drug that have already been very well established; hence my previous reference to ‘reinventing the wheel’.
As I have already indicated I am very much in favor of new research into this blight on our society; especially research which not only monitors the progress and trends associated with its use but which could be used to find ways to counter the scourge posed by alcohol.
Secondly, now that we have had a few (fairly forthright) exchanges and I know a little about your background I am prepared to accept your view that talking about the absolute risks that alcohol consumption poses in our society is useful.
I have no trouble at all with the view that properly gathered evidence and data should be viewed dispassionately. That is the way science works and is very much part of my thinking.
But Kel, I see the research that is needed as being more ‘fine-tuning’, or keeping up-to-date with developments in the discussion.
And all that sort of thing is good but I am more concerned with dealing with the more immediate and urgent issues such as those risks associated with alcohol consumption raised by the CDC. I am sure that an educated person like yourself would not consider that the CDC and other like-minded organizations and individuals have not allowed their personal feelings to cloud their judgement with regard to alcohol consumption.
Thirdly, in your final paragraph, unless I am misinterpreting your intentions, there seems to be a suggestion that the media might be sensationalizing the consequences of alcohol consumption in the community. If that is the case then my complaint would be that the media does not highlight it enough.
Personally Kel, I don’t like inter alia, war, murder, rape or religion. It would seem to me that in saying this, from your perspective (amongst others), I lay myself open to accusations of seeing these things through a “morally-charged lens” because sufficient statistical analyses have not been carried out on these issues. This might be the view of an AI robot or perhaps some programmed automaton but I don’t see it as the response of a human.
I will finish by agreeing 110% with you – “Following the evidence in the key!” Absolutely, I could not agree more!!
Sorry, what makes you think I didn’t read it? Not least because I commented in reply there before you came to reply here. Reasons, not excuses.
It’s called tendentious mendacity – not exactly untrue but meant to lead to false conclusions.
Very common in public life…and here.
In this article Bernard focuses on a perception, real or otherwise, that the media are trying to portray alcohol as “the new killer of Australians”. He then produces some data that strongly indicates that in the overall scheme of things alcohol consumption is not a major cause of death in this country. We can haggle over the semantics of the discussion but I would have thought that any reporting of the type that Bernard alludes to would be welcome if it serves to frighten people off from this pernicious and destructive substance.
Let’s also remember (as Woopwoop states above) that alcohol consumption rarely kills those who consume it immediately.
Those who drink this stuff to excess pose serious and at times, potentially fatal risks to themselves and others. A fairly comprehensive list of those risks is listed on the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. I have reproduced these below:
Short-Term Health Risks
Excessive alcohol use has immediate effects that increase the risk of many harmful health conditions. These are most often the result of binge drinking and include the following:
Long-Term Health Risks
Over time, excessive alcohol use can lead to the development of chronic diseases and other serious problems including:
By not drinking too much, you can reduce the risk of these short- and long-term health risks.
I am very well aware that many will not welcome my contribution to this discussion but I feel that my comments are very sensible and worthy of consideration. I would strongly urge readers not to allow themselves to be led into a very narrow discussion where the fatal effects only of alcohol consumption are considered.
If anything, you’ve understated the case. Many more types of cancer are alcohol related, some of them with high fatality. I spent 18 years as a paramedic and blind Freddie could see that many accidents and diseases I saw were alcohol-caused. Few would have been officially labelled so by the doctor as “cause of death” when the patient died. The ambulance trolley would need some serious cleaning between patients, and what did we use? Alcohol. It kills everything.
I do not doubt for a moment what you are saying drastic. As a ‘front-line’ worker who has dealt first-hand with the problems that this substance creates, I fully accept and respect your comments.
I spent some 5 or so years as a welfare officer in my late 20’s with a government instrumentality. I saw enough people with alcohol-related problems in that capacity; however, your experience would have been orders of magnitude worse than mine – without doubt!
as years of anti-(illegal)drug advertising has shown, scaring people rarely works and is often counter productive
I’d add that focusing only on the negatives without hitting upon the positives of why people drink will just mean people dismiss it.
To give an analogy, imagine if any discussion around drinking was centred on all the bad things driving does – give off pollution, people dying or injured in accidents, resources needed to make vehicles, funding of terrorism and dictatorships, etc. One might wonder why the hell that keeps being brought up ad nauseum without reference to the utility of driving.
If you don’t talk to the reasons people have for drinking, why would anyone expect throwing a bunch of negatives at them all drinking would be seen as anything other than preachy?
Perhaps Kel, you might care to enlighten us on all those ‘reasons’ (rather than excuses), that all those people have for drinking alcohol-based beverages.
I, for one, am really keen to hear all about this. I also hope that those ‘reasons’ might be somewhat more convincing than your driving analogy. I am also sure that there will be plenty of victims of alcohol-related domestic violence who will be awaiting your reply with bated breath. Over to you Kel.
“Perhaps Kel, you might care to enlighten us on all those ‘reasons’ (rather than excuses), that all those people have for drinking alcohol-based beverages.”
Because it’s enjoyable would be the main one. Taking mind-altering substances as a pleasure activity is as universal a cultural behaviour as we get with our species.
By trying to distinguish between “reason” and “excuse”, you’ve done well to illustrate my comment below about the negative use of moral terms around any discussion of alcohol.
Not just our species enjoy mind altering substances. There are numerous accounts of every thing from drunken bees, beetles & wasps through birds, esp cockies, to monkeys, elephants, goats etc etc deliberately seeking out intoxicants & euphoriants, quite specifically to enjoy getting off.
Ain’t Nature grand?
Yes, you are quite right, roberto. There are many in the community who are totally immune to logic and reason.
Agree, article cherry picked a bit, and Australians have a blind spot.
It’s a global problem that many Australians don’t want to admit how alcohol usage, side effects, societal impacts etc. seems to follow some neoliberal ‘trickle down effect’?
Overall one sees alcohol joined at the hip culturally with sport, dining, entertainment etc., especially middle aged, but one notices that youth seem to drink much less, and behave better than adults?
I marvel at the numbers of times I see tactic booze ads on TV – couple has their before dinner drink, wine with dinner etc etc and wonder how/who on earth started the culture of booze as an integral part of life. Marketing coup of the century. Hope you’re right that youth are breaking free – tho perhaps we will soon see weed before dinner, weed after dinner . . .
Many youth do not indulge in weed, but many older do, inc. broad -ve impacts of alcohol, that weed does not have, better than getting on the juice. Further, e.g. those Footy Shows one is basically a pub bar masquerading as a tv set where everyone has a pot or schooner of beer in front of them…. would be absolutely forbidden in many nations…
“[…] absolutely forbidden in many nations…”
Iran, for example?
Many EU nations banned alcohol advertising years ago and some have zero tolerance for driving i.e. ‘0’ blood alcohol.
I know someone locally who lost their licence through their own stupidity i.e. over the limit (driving up the street), but complains bitterly that they have to be zero for some years after regaining licence.
Canada also. Ads can show bottles but no one can be shown drinking it.
They drink less because they do other ‘recreational’ drugs! And as for behaving better, I dunno what world you live in but it sure is different to mine!
Anecdotal
My only caution for your list of the ills of alcohol is that you need to say that alcohol is a contributing cause rather the sole or even the chief cause of the problems and deaths cited.
Two examples: (1) in drink driving adds, the message is usually “don’t drink when you drive”. The chief cause of a drink-driving death is the decision of the driver to drive when drunk. Only in a few cases, does alcohol also contribute significantly to that poor decision; (2) domestic violence. For some of us, alcohol has no tendency whatever to bring on domestic violence. The most important reason is that such violence is unthinkable for many. For two many, alcohol reduces inhibitions on a nasty nature. Alcohol makes nasty people nastier and mild people nicer. Only in a few cases does alcohol reduce the capacity to reason and feel so greatly that you might argue that it rather than character was the main cause of domestic violence.
Mirrors WHO’s take too.
Absolutely Drew.
This what Media does best.
MSM has followed in the footsteps of Social Media in exaggerating, sensationalizing, and misinforming.
Wowserism is alive and well, and always trumps accuracy in the popular media
If you or anyone else wishes to describe me as a ‘wowser’ because I would like to see a reduction in the incidence of alcohol-related problems in society, then bruce, I will proudly wear that epithet as a “Badge of Honor”. I feel absolutely flattered (not to mention humbled).
Thank you!