Dr Peter Anderson and his colleagues from the Institute of Alcohol Studies in England have been asked by the European commission to present them with a public health report on the effects of alcohol. Here he offers a short preview of the findings...
Six times as many men as women suffer from alcohol-related harm and premature death in Europe.
The European Union is the heaviest drinking region of the world, with each adult drinker consuming on average 15 litres of pure alcohol every year, a level over two-and-a-half times the rest of the world’s average. Alcohol is the third most important risk factor (after smoking and high blood pressure) for European ill-health and premature death.
Despite the large media attention on girls’ and women’s drinking, in nearly every culture studied, irrespective of that culture’s level or pattern of drinking, boys and men are more likely to drink than girls and women, and drink more when they do.
European boys are more likely than girls to have:
- tried alcohol by age 11 years,
- to have been drunk by 13 years,
- to binge-drink,
- to be drunk, and
- to drink more on each drinking occasion.
Men’s share of total consumption in Europe is around two to three times that of women’s; and men report three to six times as much binge-drinking. Furthermore, men are five times as likely to be dependent on alcohol as women.
It is hard to find evidence that this gender gap has decreased for most aspects of drinking, although the gender gap in drunkenness is lowest in adolescents and young adults.
The gender gap in drinking is reflected in a gender gap in harm. Twelve per cent of all European male ill-health and premature death is due to alcohol, six times as high as the still sizeable 2% of all female ill-health and premature death. Figure 1 shows that most of this burden is due to accidents and neuropsychitaric conditions.
The burden of ill-health due to alcohol is disproportionally shouldered by young men in Europe, with 13,400 deaths in men aged between 15 and 29 years being due to alcohol (28% of all deaths in this age group), seven times as high as the 1,900 deaths due to alcohol occurring in the same age group of women (figure 2). The 36,200 alcohol-related deaths that occur in men in the age group 45-59 years represent 12% of all deaths, being nearly four times as high as the 9,700 alcohol-related deaths that occur in women of the same age.
Fortunately, although they drink more and have more problems, men are just as likely to respond equally to help to cut down on their drinking as women. Brief advice offered by family doctors works equally well for men and women, with one out of every eight heavy drinkers who have been so advised, no longer drinking at hazardous or harmful levels. Moreover, because environmental policies that help make less harmful drinking choices easier choices (for example, increasing the price of alcohol), have a stronger impact on heavier drinkers, more men are more likely to have less alcohol-related harm as a result of such policies.
Dr Peter Anderson is public advisor at EUROCARE (Advocacy for the prevention of alcohol related harm in Europe) and the lead author of a European study on alcohol policies to be published soon which will serve as a basis for the next EU strategy to reduce alcohol-related harm.
