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from the Isssh-nothing-to-be-proud-of,-hic,-hic dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Aussies, Yanks may think they're big drinkers – but Brits easily booze them under the table
The top ten per cent of Australia's boozy population downs more than half of the alcohol consumed in the country, according to new research – and the Brits are even worse.
Two researchers from the La Trobe University, Australia, uncovered the eye popping statistic from two surveys: the 2013 International Alcohol Control Study and the 2016 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, as well as more recent research work.
"We found that the heaviest drinking 10 per cent of Australians drink 54.4 per cent of all alcohol consumed in Australia," said Michael Livingston, co-author of the paper published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health and an alcohol policy expert at La Trobe University, on Thursday this week.
The paper also highlighted the intoxicating habits of other countries too. The US fares slightly worse. Ten per cent of America's population guzzled about 55 per cent of all the boozy beverages. But it looked even more diabolical for the Brits - just four per cent of its population glugged a whopping 30 per cent of all its alcohol and they easily outpace Aussies and Americans.
Livingston and his colleague Sarah Callinan, also a researcher at La Trobe's Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, found that Australia's top alcoholics were more likely to be middle-aged men living in rural areas.
"We know that rural areas have disproportionately high levels of consumption and alcohol-related harm compared to metropolitan areas. We found that 16 per cent of this heavy-drinking subset live in outer regional and remote areas, compared with 10 per cent of other drinkers."
[...] "Clearly government has a responsibility to address the problem of cheap alcohol by fixing the way alcohol is taxed, introducing floor prices and halting the proliferation of harm-causing packaged alcohol sales," he said./p>
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 21 2019, @05:31PM (3 children)
We've tried that. "Personal responsibility" is all well and good for people like you and I, but some of us simply don't have it, and what then? Then, we have to go into a mode that protects the rest of society.
People who refuse to see that, sorry, *are* malevolent. We need to treat this like the public health crisis it is, with emphasis on preventive methods. It'll cost less in the end, even if you're speaking only of cash flow. Yes, there's going to be a Pareto-type split, where a lot of the funding is used by a few of the cases, but Pareto splits and power laws show up *everywhere* in nature.
The people who hide behind the veil of small-L-libertarianism and shouts of "personal responsibility" just want to see others suffer, and are willing to pay more and make all of us pay more, in ways that extend well beyond currency, to see that this suffering happens.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @11:31PM (2 children)
One on one, I think they would all be willing to give someone a hand to get his/her life back together. They're all Heinlein fans for a start. http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=468 [awakin.org]
They just don't believe that government programs are an effective solution. They've got a fair bit of evidence on their side that government departments perpetuate the problems that they were created to solve.
If you think that qualifies as evil then I think you have never met 'true evil'.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 22 2019, @12:37AM (1 child)
Sometimes the programs do, sometimes they don't. Often when they don't, I've found, it's down to either corruption or not actually understanding what the problem is, or sometimes, good ol' Law of Unintended Consequences.
There's no simple solution to any of this, because it's not a simple problem. The root causes are deeply ingrained in US culture, and until that changes--and it will not until at least the Boomers are dead--I fear we're not going to get anywhere.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @09:34PM
Don't forget crippling the programs with excessive attempts at "accountability" that prevent people from getting the help or that put stupid restrictions on the aid which creates a welfare trap.
Usually these methods are put in place by conservative opponents of "free handouts" and then the failures they created as proof the system doesn't work.
/puke