It's true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors — job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don't get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.)Let me point out what Time didn't get around to saying, which is that taxes more than double the cost of alcohol. If the above turns out to be true, taxes on alcohol should be abolished .
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Added alcohol thought
From that Time article:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think many are going to question both the methodology of this study and the conclusions that are drawn as reported by TIME Magazine. Earlier studies have suggested that moderate drinking can be beneficial, but I don't consider 1-3 drinks per day to be moderate drinking. I certainly couldn't drink that much every day if I tried, and if I did I would be useless to do anything in the evening--I would fall asleep if I were attending a concert or even just watching television, and would not be much good for anything the next morning. I confine my drinking to one or two scotches on Friday and Saturday night a) if I don't have to drive a car afterwards, b) when I don't have any other committments, and c) if I don't have to be up early the next morning.
ReplyDeleteI also strongly question their assertion that those who abstain from drinking tend to be from lower socio-economic classes. Earlier studies have shown just the opposite and I know for a fact the same is true in studies done here in CT. During economic downturns, it is the elite wine shops in the upscale towns that suffer more than the ordinary liquor stores in blue collar areas, which do a booming business. And by and large, people of higher socioeconomic classes do not get alcohol-related illnesses, e.g, cirhossis of the liver.
They also don't mention that the same antioxidant benefits of drinking wine, for example, can be had from drinking grape juice or products like Resveratrol, a fourth of a cup of which affords the same health benefits of drinking hundreds of glasses of wine without the alcohol content.
I don't think this study has legs, and I don't think people should take it seriously, I certainly don't.
I'm with you on the three drinks per day. That seems a tad high for me. Of course that is the maximum but my limit is about two drinks according to the technical definition of "1 drink".
ReplyDeleteI suspect the bit about socio-economic factors is just a lazy journalist with his brain on auto-pilot. My point was that any reporter who really believed that would have followed up with more information about just how obscene taxes on alcohol are.
Two drinks is my max also. And I absolutely agree with you about the lazy journalist, there's so much evidence--and just common sense--to the contrary. The lower classes use alcohol as a coping strategy far more than the upscale yuppies--they run 5 mi a day to get rid of stress.
ReplyDeleteBut I do agree with you about the obscene liquor taxes. Back in the 70s and early 80s I used to enjoy a shot of Grand Marnier or Courvoisier over ice or even over vanilla ice cream after dinner on the weekend until they started taxing the imports even higher. Now, maybe once a year I'll get the smallest bottle and drink it very sparingly until its finished, and then wait another year to get more. The price now is outrageous, and I refuse to pay it.