Alcohol Policy in Europe Chapter 2. What alcohol can do to European societies CHAPTER 2. WHAT ALCOHOL CAN DO TO EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

Alcohol consumption has been identified as a risk factor for burden of disease and social harm. As the European region features a level of alcohol consumption which ranks among the highest globally, the countries of the European Union show a high level of alcohol-attributable harm. In the EU, in 2004, almost 95,000 men and more than 25,000 women between 15 and 64 years of age were estimated to have died of alcohol-attributable causes prematurely. This means that 1 in 7 male and 1 in 13 female premature deaths were caused by alcohol. These are net numbers, already taken into consideration the protective effect of alcohol on ischemic disease and diabetes. Moreover, as alcohol consumption contributes substantially to morbidity and disability as well, the overall alcohol-attributable burden of disease is high. In 2004, over 4 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), i.e., years of life lost either due to premature mortality or due to disability, were estimated to be caused by alcohol consumption, corresponding to 15 % of all DALYs in men and 4 % of all DALYs in women. Most of the health harms related to alcohol are caused by heavy drinking. The high toll of alcohol-attributable burden requires alcohol policy countermeasures including a monitoring system that is capable of evaluating change. While the tools for such a monitoring system exist, it is not possible to implement fully, as almost all countries lack comparable routine data on burden of disease such as DALYs. As DALYs are not part of the routine statistics in Europe, it is proposed to develop a monitoring system for alcohol-attributable harm, which includes other non-fatal indicators and summary measures of health