Why aren’t health warnings on cigarettes expanded to alcohol?
Why aren’t health warnings on cigarettes expanded to alcohol?
New cigarette regulations offer a point for public health to refer to that would advance solutions in alcohol consumption.
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Warnings now do appear on the back of alcohol in the EU but they're usually small things on the back of the label stating the units of alcohol in the bottle & warning about drinking while pregnant or whatever.
Problem with these is they state some tiny amount equivalent to like half a glass of wine as the most you should have in a day, even though in the real world.. basically anyone who drinks has a at least a little bit more than that and the moderate majority are fine and not on death's door. I know 70 and 80 year olds in the pub who must drink 10+ units a day (I actually notice the oldies are the worst for wanting like 6%+ ABV beers) and are still there doing fine. So it has a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" effect to slap warnings on about drinking more than 14 units a week / 2 a day / whatever when at least in the UK like "everyone" drinks more than that. It just becomes a lauging stock, "look at that silly over-cautious nanny label". If there should be any warning, IMO it'd be not to binge. If you can't remember what happened the next morning, you drank too much, and it's if you do that too often that it's a major health risk.
Drinking more than these labelled amounts isn't good for you, but health warnings should be more closely aligned to "really bad for you" to be taken seriously imo.
Well, because even those tiny amounts have a negative effect on your body. Instead of laughing about it, maybe you should consider, that you and everyone around you consumes too much alcohol? It's exactly the 1 beer a day, that leads to addiction (and, possibly, cancer).
He's talking about how the standard unit of alcohol definition bears no resemblance to anything people actually interact with in the real world. For example, one unit of alcohol is ~200mL of a typical beer. When was the last time you saw beer sold in 200mL containers?
He is saying that if you want to communicate such ideas to people you need to speak to them at their level, not something geared towards scientists. If you ask random people on the street how much beer one drink is, they will likely tell you it is one pint (473mL), when in reality that is more than two drinks.
And when one finds out that, they are not going to reel in horror, they are going to laugh at how out of touch someone was to communicate that idea so poorly.
More specifically (btw pint = 568ml) when I said about laughing at it I meant more at how it's so little you might as well not drink at all. Which I get is their point as this poster obviously loathes alcohol and thinks it's the most dangerous thing in the world, but yet we're not all dropping left and right as you'd expect. If it was that dangerous the UK population would've been wiped out by now.
No one, literally no one, goes out and has half a pint then says "well the label says that's too much so I'm off home". That's where, right or wrong, the suggestion is kind of laughable.
It's an ideal, perhaps. But it's such a tight ideal that no one will even try to follow it. Maybe if they aimed for "better" rather than "almost perfect" (with perfection being teetotality) they'd have more success. A label more like "if you can't remember what happened when you wake up tomorrow, you're severely harming your health" would at least get some of those in the biggest danger to rein it in a bit.
People will still laugh, even if scientists say, that half a beer (250ml) is already bad for you. Scientists need to present facts, if people head their conclusions or not, is not really their problem in most cases. Our society is deeply ingrained with alcohol abuse. How do you think scientists or science journalism should present the fact, that even small amounts of alcohol are detrimental to your health, to the general public?
How do you think scientists or science journalism should present the fact, that even small amounts of alcohol are detrimental to your health, to the general public?
Before we get too deep, is the intent to present the facts, or to guide behaviour? I always took it was the latter, but you could be right that it is the former. In which case, whatever we're doing is fine. The facts are out there. If people want to laugh at the facts, so be it.
Facts don't guide behaviour, though. Human behaviour is guided by emulation of those envied in society. More simply, whatever a rich person does, the general public will soon try to copy them. And, indeed, alcohol has shown be to central to fortunes. That data shows a higher rate of alcohol use amongst those who are considered rich. In fact, some studies suggest that fortunes are built on the social connections greased by the lowering of inhibitions caused by alcohol.
If the intent is to guide behaviour, scientists can develop something to see fortunes more likely to end up in the hands of the teetotallers. If sipping water in their mother's basement and not getting completely blasted at the Kentucky Derby was what rich people did, attitudes would change pretty quickly.
Of course, the data also shows a higher rate of alcohol use amongst those who succeed in academia ([1] i.e. the scientists themselves) ([2] something also correlated with being wealthier), so it may not be something they have an interest in.