The issue of alcohol-related harm and how it gets reported
to the public is one that concerns me. We’re all very busy, so we tend to
absorb headlines and not question the numbers or the conclusions based on them.
That’s understandable when it comes to members of the public, but rather less
so when applied to journalists writing stories. While the pursuit of a
sensational headline may be what drives the tabloids, we ought to expect more
from companies such as the Guardian and the Telegraph than the kind of lazy
journalism we’ve seen recently.
What seems to drive so-called “public health” is the
determination to relay simple messages repeatedly so they become “established
fact” – things that “everybody knows”. The way in which they make claims about
alcohol as a cause of cancer, and how that gets reported in the press is a case
in point. The evidence of a link between drinking beverage alcohol and most
cancers is extremely weak. Even where such a link has been established the
numbers are usually vanishingly small. Here are some examples:
In England and Wales in 2014 there were 6,754 deaths from
cancer of the oesophagus, of which just 26 – 0.4% – were recorded as having
been caused by drinking alcohol. The biggest link between alcohol and cancer is
in relation to liver cancer, but it is still extremely rare. There were 4,442
liver cancer deaths in 2014 of which 439 were alcohol-related – 9.9%. (Source:
Office for National Statistics data).
The public often confuses alcohol-related liver cancer with
alcoholic liver disease. The two are not the same. Alcoholic liver disease
accounts for about 65% of deaths caused by excessive alcohol consumption.
Contrary to what sensationalist headlines in the Guardian and the Telegraph
said recently, in which it was claimed such deaths would “soar” in the next
five years, the reality over the past five years is deaths from diseases caused
by alcohol are stable. In 2011, there were 8,748 such deaths and in 2015,
8,758. The average is 8,597 per year. (Source: Office for National Statistics
data).
If 65% of these deaths arise are from alcoholic liver
disease, then that is about 5,588 deaths per year. Each of these deaths is an
avoidable tragedy. But most of them were in men (65%); most were people aged 55
to 65 years old, and the average level of consumption was 200 units of alcohol
per week – the equivalent of a bottle of scotch a day. So, the picture that
emerges is one of a discrete group of alcoholics who are drinking vast quantities
of alcohol over many years and dying prematurely. It is only when you
understand these sorts of specifics you realise that whole population measures
such as minimum pricing will not impact on the delinquent drinking behaviour of
this minority of consumers.
Talking of delinquent behaviour – the latest drink-driving
statistics have just been released. According to the Department for Transport
(DfT) there were 1,170 serious injuries or fatalities in 2015 as a result of
drink-driving. This is up from 1,070 in 2014 – an increase of 9.3%. But if you
separate deaths from drink-driving from the combined figure they fell by 17%
from 240 to 200. Confusingly the DfT defined the increase of 9.9% in the
combined figure as statistically significant, but the decrease of 17% in
fatalities as statistically insignificant, merely representing the
“continuation of a period of stability”.
Predictably, campaigners are calling for a reduction in the
drink-drive limit to bring England and Wales in line with Scotland, where the
measure has had a devastating effect on pub businesses. The problem is not so
much a dearth of accurate information, but the way in which lobby and research
groups frame the dissemination of information and how it gets picked up and
used in the media.
By Paul Chase
