The British Public Health Agency (PHE) has analyzed the evolution of liver disease over 12 years. The results of their study are alarming: the number of deaths linked to these pathologies has increased by 40% in Great Britain and is affecting more and more young people. L’alcohol would be responsible for a third of these deaths. Also increasing the number of hepatitis B and C and obesity.
“England is the only country in Europe where the number of deaths from liver disease is increasing, because our alcohol consumption is increasing and that of other countries is decreasing,” explains Emily Robinson, president of the Association Alcohol Concern.
The generation that grew up with binge drinkingopen bars and grocery stores that sell alcohol 24 hours a day has been sacrificed to alcohol.
“It’s a tragedy to see all these cases of young people dying at the age of 20 from liver disease caused by alcohol,” says Emily Robinson indignantly on the BBC website. “Above all, that these premature deaths could be avoided if the public authorities made alcohol less accessible and more expensive”.
Indeed, this study proves that limiting points of sale open 24 hours a day reduces the number of alcohol-related deaths.
In Blackpool (north-west England), the death rate from liver disease is around 58.4 per 100,000 people, and the number of liquor store licenses is 1 in 72. adults. In the Central Bedfordshire district in the center of the country, this rate drops to 13 per 100,000 and the number of shops is significantly lower (one for every 280 adults).
Alcohol is wreaking havoc in France and around the world
If the other European countries do not seem affected by this development, we must not forget that thealcohol remains a public health problem in France that kills 45,000 people a year. The short-term risks are of a social and psychological nature (withdrawal of the licence, car accidents, violence, depression) and those in the long term are of a pathological nature, with physical dependence on the product, serious behavioral disorders ( depression, suicide, insomnia) cirrhosis, cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, intestine and liver, cardiovascular diseases and arterial hypertension.
And, 1 in 5 deaths in the world is linked to the consumption of alcohol, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 3.3 million people died of it in 2012, compared to 2.5 million in 2005. And 320,000 young people aged 15 to 29 die each year from alcohol-related causes, recalls the WHO.
