Alcohol Policies Project

Center for Science in the Public Interest

1875 Connecticut Ave NW Ste 300

Washington, DC  20009

202/777-8385

202/265-4954 (f)

alcproject@cspinet.org

http://cspinet.org/booze

 

 

Related Links:

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

 

Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems

 

Trauma Foundation

 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Stop Impaired Driving Program

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Other Alcohol-Related Harms

All alcoholic beverages can cause harm to people.  However, beer is responsible for most of the harm because it is the most consumed alcoholic beverage, the favorite alcoholic beverage of underage youth, and the one most often consumed in binge amounts.

 

The problems caused by alcohol consumption include:

  • riots

  • high gonorrhea rates

  • incidents of crime and violence

  • sexual assaults and rape

  • domestic violence

  • low graduation rates and school failures

  • traffic crashes and fatalities

  • low employment productivity

  • liver cirrhosis and other diseases

  • alcoholism

  • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects

On BeerServesAmerica.com, beer producers trumpet the thousands of jobs created by their industry and tout the benefits to the economy and society. 

  • Some of the jobs they don't mention include:

    • Healthcare professionals, including emergency department physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, alcoholism counselors, paramedics

    • police officers

    • fire-fighters

    • judges, lawyers

    • insurance agents

    • social workers, and

    • morticians.

    Those people are "first responders" to alcohol problems across the nation.

  • Big Beer also ignores the debit side of the economic and social ledger:

    • In 1998, the estimated economic cost of alcohol abuse in the United States exceeded $184 billion.  This cost represents roughly $683 for every man, woman and child living in the United States.1

    • The cost to Americans of underage drinking totals nearly $61.9 billion, equivalent to more than $200 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.2

    • In 2000, the estimated cost of alcohol-related traffic crashes to the public in the United States surpassed $114 billion.3

    • According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, federal excise tax collections for alcoholic beverages totaled approximately $8.9 billion in 2005. Put into perspective, that amounts to about 4.8 percent of the $185 billion in alcohol-related costs experience by the American public.4

    • As the third leading cause of death in 2000, alcohol consumption caused 85,000 deaths in the U.S.  Researchers reported that that figure was conservative, considering that death among people who had stopped drinking alcohol could have been due to damage or illness from their previous alcohol use.  Deaths were caused by:5

      • alcohol-related traffic crashes

      • various types of cancers, including esophageal, liver, female breast cancer

      • stroke

      • hypertensive heart disease

      • chronic liver diseases

      • cirrhosis

    • Alcohol consumption also leads other problems besides death, including:

      • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

      • violent crime

      • domestic violence, including spousal and child abuse

      • incarceration

References:

1. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (2000). 10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health. NIH Publication No. 00-1583. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Chapter 6. Online: http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/10report/chap06.pdf

2. "Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center", a project of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, March 2004. Accessible online: http://www.udetc.org/UnderageDrinkingCosts.asp

3. Taylor, D., Miller T.R. & Cox, K.C. (2002). Impaired driving in the United States. Fact Sheet. Prepared by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation for the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. Online: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/page%202.htm.

4. Harwood, H. Updating Estimates of the Economic Costs of Alcohol Abuse in the United States: Estimates, Update Methods, and Data. Report prepared by The Lewin Group for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2000. Based on estimates, analyses, and data reported in Harwood, H.; Fountain, D.; and Livermore, G. The Economic Costs of Alcohol and Drug Abuse in the United States 1992. Report prepared for the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. NIH Publication No. 98-4327. Rockville, MD: National Institutes of Health, 1998.

5. Mokdad, A.H., Marks, J.S., Stroup, D.F. & Gerberding, J.L. (2004). Actual causes of death in the United States, 2000. JAMA. 291(10):1238-1245.

Page updated June, 2007