Tuesday 19 November 2013

Alcohol Awareness Week: The J-Curve

Alcohol Awareness Week is upon us and I will take the opportunity, once again, to keep readers informed about facts that will not be mentioned by Alcohol Concern et al.

First up, the J-Curve. With a tip of the titfer to Eric Crampton, I give you these graphs (click to enlarge)...


What do these graphs show? Firstly, they show that the safe drinking guidelines issued by the UK's medical establishment—21 units a week for women and 28 units for men—are arbitrary an scientifically insupportable, but you knew that already.

Secondly, that drinking moderately is good for you and that the reduced risk of mortality seen in drinkers is not due to the 'sick quitter hypothesis'—note that the first graph shows that the benefits of drinking are not as strong when former drinkers are included in the analysis, but they are still substantial.

Thirdly, that the optimal level of drinking is quite low, at around one drink per day (or 5-10 units per week), but that you would have to drink a lot more than before your mortality risk rises to that of a teetotaller. If complete abstinence is 'safe', then so is drinking 30, 40 and perhaps 50 units a week. Only beyond this point does one's risk rise above that of the teetotaller.

The epidemiological evidence for this is robust and has defied alternative explanations. Nevertheless, the public health racket is determined to reduce the guidelines still further. It's not about science, it's about propaganda. The scale of a country's supposed booze epidemic is now largely measured by how many people exceed these risible guidelines. Surprisingly few do, even when weekly guidelines are (illegitimately) reduced to daily guidelines, and overall consumption has been falling for a decade, so lowering the limit is the puritans' best chance of sustaining the moral panic.

Stephen Fry has more...



And, from James Nicholls' splendid book The Politics of Alcohol, here's what the drinking guidelines were in 1979...




And here's why they were changed...






5 comments:

DP said...

Dear Mr Snowdon

Thank you for raising my awareness of alcohol today. I had forgotten all about it.

With your timely reminder I can now have five of my one a day as recommended by those awfully nice people concerned about my alcohol consumption.

In reciprocation for their concern about my alcohol consumption, I suggest we start a Tax Awareness and Sockpuppetry Week* to hector them about their consumption of our taxes - indeed they seem to be addicted to them, poor dears.

I'll drink to that.

DP

* Why a week? Why not make it a month, or all year?

Eric Crampton said...

Thanks for the pointer to the Nicholls book - have ordered.

Wiel said...

Note that, in the top graph, all values below the 1 line are beneficial to health. That means that at those amounts where the graph goes over this reference line, it starts to be harmfull.
I am missing the upper and lower confidence intervals, BTW.

Wiel said...

Oh, sorry. I see that those intervals are in there... Great graphs, Chris...

Jonathan Bagley said...

8 grams of alcohol (10ml, as alcohol is less dense than water) is one unit, so that on the graphs, "drinks per day" are not the same as "units per day". 40g/d is in fact 5 units, so I'm ok.