Andrew -- you can get almost all the heart health benefits, on present
evidence, with one drink every second day.  So this aspect provides little
justification for abandoning the public health model of alcohol-related
problems.
   I was just looking at the data for Ontario the other day.  Among 10-19
year olds, alcohol accounts for over three times the hospital days
attributable to tobacco, and over 7 times the hospital days due to illicit
drugs.  Alcohol accounts for over 20 times as many life-years lost from
deaths at age 10-19 as tobacco, and over 9 times as many as illicit
drugs.  The figures are almost as dramatic for 20-24 year olds.
   From this perspective, too, the public health model has not lost its
relevance.  Robin
 
>>> Andrew Barr <[log in to unmask]> 04/28/98
12:16pm >>>
Interesting to see that the Irish Minister of Health is still subscribing
to the dictum that "less is better". This, of course, is the prevention
paradox or population/public health model of alcohol-related problems,
which I thought governments were generally in the process of
abandoning, as
they are forced to accept the evidence of the health benefits of
moderate
alcohol consumption (not to mention the fundamental shakiness of the
Ledermann theory on which it is based). I know that the WHO still
subscribes to it, but the British government no longer does so, nor
(would
it appear) the US government, now that CSAP has stopped trying to talk
about alcohol as just another drug of which there is no such thing as
responsible use. It is, however, much easier to find evidence of
governments adopting such a policy than to find out when they abandon
it,
as they are hardly going to make a public announcement to the effect
that
what they have been telling everyone is actually wrong. Does anyone
know of
any other evidence to show that governments are indeed abandoning
this
model for the prevention of alcohol-related problems? Or is this another
case of looking for the dog that did not bark in the night?