Dr. Obvious last night e-mailed me the coordinates of study findings, purportedly showing that ‘older people in wealthy countries consume more alcohol than their counterparts in middle-income countries, on average, although a higher cost of alcohol is associated with less frequent drinking’…
Older folks drinking more? Means Motive and Opportunity…
Starting off on a wobbly leg
First of all, I almost laughed out loud when I saw that the source of the study was quoted as Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. No kidding. But the place checks out; I looked it up myself.
Second, I was hard pressed to discern what the team was trying to prove by their study. Statements of the the findings of most learned research efforts begin with a statement of their purpose and the reasons researchers decided to undertake the studies in the first place. It sounded like a learned fishing expedition, at first. But maybe that was just the abstract.
“Do you suppose they, themselves, had been drinking when they came up with the idea for this one?” the esteemed Dr. asked. I had to assay the evidence for myself before commenting, of course.
What they did
The researchers analyzed survey data collected from 100,000 individuals age 50 and older in 17 countries in Europe, as well as China, Mexico, Israel, South Korea, and the United States.
Average weekly alcohol consumption ranged from 0.59 units in Mexico to 6.85 units in the Netherlands. In the United States, older adults consumed 2.07 standard units per week. One standard unit is equivalent to a small shot glass of vodka or a 12 oz. glass of 5 percent beer.
The price of alcohol – measured by the cost of a bottle of red label Smirnoff vodka – varied from a low of $7.92 in Mexico to $38.06 in Ireland (4.96 standard units/week).
The (obvious) findings
Here’s a point-form list of the study’s raw findings:
· Older people in wealthy countries consume more alcohol than their counterparts in middle-income countries, on average. No surprise, there. They drink more because they can. And, if you watch your TV and take in movies like a good consumer, you’ll see that ‘Have a drink’ is still more commonly portrayed as a rich folks’ social convention that it is for mid-income folks or the poor.
· Alcohol use disorders among adults 65 and older have more than doubled in the last ten years. The most recent 45 of those years has gone down in history as the Trump era. You’d have starting drinking more the moment you heard him tell people not to believe anything they saw or heard unless they got it from him.
· A higher cost of alcohol is associated with less frequent drinking. Duh!
·There are signs that alcohol consumption in general is further increasing during the pandemic. We knew that, simply from surveys of sales statistics. And nobody was surprised to hear it. Just like the odds of people committing murder, the odds of people drinking more were fated to rise in proportion to the increase in the simultaneous presence of means, motive and opportunity during the pandemic isolation era (see photo, above).
· The majority of alcohol-related deaths occur among older people. Duh! again. All you have to do is read the Obituaries regularly to see that the majority of all deaths occur among older people.
The official takeaway
“As countries develop economically and older people living there can afford to drink more, these countries should consider policies to regulate alcohol consumption, potentially combining minimum alcohol prices, taxation, sale and marketing regulations, and cessation programs,” adds Study Report Senior Author Dr. Katherine M. Keyes of Columbia Mailman School. The idea being that it would cost less to control the issue now, rather than to just let it happen, and have to dig in and ‘fix’ it later, after the social and economic damage is done.
My take
I spoke to my ancient and esteemed Mother about this study and the issues it raises. And she simply said, “Anybody old enough to remember, or even remember about, Hitler, the Soviet Empire, Joe McCarthy and the RED Scare, Jim Crow or the KKK (see photo, top of page) could be expected to be drinking more these days, with the prospect of 4 more years of Trump staring them in the face!”
Footnote:
Why does the retail cost of booze vary so much between countries such as Mexico and Ireland? The secret is, mainly, the levels of taxation levied on booze in the respective jurisdictions. Richer countries generally impose higher rates of tax on crucial commodities such as Alcohol, Tobacco and Gasoline.
The stated purpose of high taxes is to discourage the abuse (or any use at all) of substances that have been clearly demonstrated to be damaging or dangerous. The real reason is that driving is a necessity in our modern lifestyle, and drinking and smoking are literally addictive. Politicians know that all three of those classes of products will continue to provide reliable and perpetual sources of high revenues.
Doctors and environmental scientists plead with people to eliminate the bad habits, but most folks literally can’t. On the other side of the coin – literally – politicians look down their noses at the great masses of their constituents and say, “It’s up to you to cut down or quit these dangerous activities. We don’t want to be accused or outlawing something as popular as driving, smoking or drinking. We are, in fact, preserving your God-given right to choose by leaving the ‘choice’ up to you.”
Dictating to their voters might make politicians unpopular, and the last thing a politician wants to be is unpopular.
~ Maggie J.