Tuesday, 8 September 2009

Ban it! Ban it!

From the BBC:

There should be a ban on all alcohol advertising, including sports and music sponsorship, doctors say.

The British Medical Association said the crackdown on marketing was needed along with an end to cut-price deals to stop the rising rates of consumption. The industry spends £800m a year on promoting drinks - just a quarter of which goes on direct advertising. Doctors said action was needed as alcohol was now one of the leading causes (1) of early death and disability.


(1) Dont'cha just love that catch-all phrase "one of the leading causes". Is it one of the two or three main causes? Nope. Is it maybe in the top ten? Nope. Top twenty, perhaps? Nope. Even if we accept the official statistics as true, every year it's about eighteen deaths per hundred thousand males and nine deaths per hundred thousand females.

Or to put it into context, there are about nine thousand alcohol-related deaths and one thousand deaths caused by falling down the stairs.

5 comments:

knirirr said...

I wonder if these meddling statists would be satisfied with a compulsory government health warning after all booze adverts, as they have in Sweden.

manwiddicombe said...

It upset me too!

JuliaM said...

I love the way the BBC uses the word 'doctors' to describe what a few doctors who don't really do any actual doctoring any more are calling for....

Rob said...

Soon, any death with any connection at all with alcohol will be labelled as "alcohol related". E.g. passenger on a coach which crashes who had drunk a pint of beer a few hours before? Alcohol related. Man knocked down on the pavement walking home from the pub? Alcohol related.

I am extremely suspicious of the massive 'rise' in the cost of 'alcohol-related' disease released recently by the health mafia. Very, very suspicious indeed. Is a qualified person fisking their methodology?

bayard said...

@Rob "related" or " related to" is one of those words/phrases beloved of journalists, that make something of nothing, like "up to", "linked to" or, worse "said to be linked to", or "amongst" as picked up by MW in his post. Once you are aware of such things, it's amazing how content-free most journalism starts to appear.