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London School of Economics launches inquiry into allegations Jewish student’s nose was broken during incident in Val d’Isère
The London School of Economics is investigating allegations that a Nazi-themed drinking game led to a brawl in which a Jewish student’s nose was broken.
The inquiry relates to a skiing trip to Val d’Isère organised by the students‘ union last month and attended by 150 students from the university’s athletics union.
According to a statement released by the LSE’s Jewish society, the assault took place after a Jewish student objected to the drinking game. The violence was not serious enough for French police to be involved, a students‘ union source said.
The LSE said: „These are disturbing allegations relating to events which took place on a foreign trip organised by the students‘ union. Both the SU and LSE are investigating these events and are prepared to take disciplinary action if the allegations are shown to be true.
(Source: newsletter Active, 01/19/12) guardian.co.uk, 01/16/12

The International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP; www.icap.org) is pleased to announce the release of Guiding Principles for Responsible Beverage Alcohol Marketing associated with the Self-Regulation initiative of Global Actions on Harmful Drinking (www.global-actions.org).

“For the first time, we now have common global standards for alcohol marketing. This represents a major step in the long-standing commitment by the leading alcohol producers to effective self-regulation,” said World Federation of Advertisers Managing Director Stephan Loerke. “WFA looks forward to working with them to implement these standards at a local level.” …
(Source: Alcohol Reports, 01/14/12)
Comment: ICAP is the main institution of the global alcohol industry. This will be a new attempt to make alcohol advertising socially acceptable. The wolf needs new sheep’s clothing.

A new study provides clues about the brain mechanisms that drive people to abuse alcohol. The study found a link between how good people feel after they drink, and the amount of endorphins—proteins with opiate-like effects—released in their brain.

Similar findings have been seen in animal studies, but this is the first time they have been observed in humans, according to a news release by the University of California, San Francisco, where the research was conducted. “This is something that we’ve speculated about for 30 years, based on animal studies, but haven’t observed in humans until now,” said lead author Jennifer Mitchell, PhD. “It provides the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good.”

Researchers studied 15 volunteers; 13 were heavy social drinkers and 12 were not. Women were considered heavy social drinkers if they consumed 10 to 16 drinks a week, while men in that category had 14 to 20 drinks weekly, CNN reports. Women who were not heavy social drinkers had fewer than five drinks a week, while the men had fewer than seven drinks. …
(Source: Join Together, 01/13/12)
Medical News Today, 01/13/12

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say 38 million American adults are binge drinkers, and most of them are ages 18 to 34. In a new report, the CDC says that while binge drinking is more common among young adults, those age 65 and older who binge drink do so more often—an average of five to six times a month. …

Binge drinking is responsible for more than half of the 80,000 alcohol-related deaths each year in the United States, and accounts for about three-fourths of the more than $200 billion in costs from alcohol abuse, according to the CDC.

“Binge drinking causes a wide range of health, social and economic problems and this report confirms the problem is really widespread,” CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. said in a news release. “We need to work together to implement proven measures to reduce binge drinking at national, state and community levels.”

The CDC found binge drinking is more common among people with household incomes of $75,000 or more. However, binge drinkers with household incomes of less than $25,000 have the largest number of drinks per sitting—an average of eight to nine drinks.
(Source: Join Together, 01/11/12)
Comment: In one of the online comments is pointed out that this result shows that not only the alcoholics are the problem who cause the alcohol related harm to society. That is what the alcohol industry wants to make us believe.
From Full report (pdf):
Implications for Public Health Practice: More widespread implementation of Community Guide–recommended interventions (e.g., measures controlling access to alcohol and increasing prices) could reduce the frequency, intensity, and ultimately the prevalence of binge drinking, as well as the health and social costs related to it.

16-year-olds can currently buy beer and wine in stores, but must wait until they are 18 to be served in bars.
In an Opinion poll of 1,126 Danes conducted for Retail Institute Scandinavia, 73 percent said it was “a good idea” or “a very good idea” to forbid the sale of alcohol to individuals under 18.
Sharing that opinion was the health minister, Astrid Krag of the Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF).
“Danes’ high alcohol consumption is to blame for poor health and a lower life span, and especially among the younger population we have a problem that we must tackle,” Krag said to Berlingske newspaper. “Therefore, I’m happy to the see the opinion results and I believe that the age limit is one of the things we should adjust.” … (Source: Alcohol Reports – News, 01/09/12) theCopenhagenpost, 01/06/12

Abstract:
Aims: Minimum alcohol prices in British Columbia have been adjusted intermittently over the past 20 years. The present study estimates impacts of these adjustments on alcohol consumption.
Design: Time series and longitudinal models of aggregate alcohol consumption with price and other economic data as independent variables.
Setting: British Columbia (BC), Canada.
Measurements: Data on alcohol prices and sales for different beverages were provided by the BC Liquor Distribution Branch for 1989 to 2010. Data on household income were sourced from Statistics Canada.
Findings: Longitudinal estimates suggest that a 10% increase in the minimum price of an alcoholic beverage reduced its consumption relative to other beverages by 16.1% (P<0.001). Time series estimates indicate that a 10% increase in minimum prices reduced consumption of spirits and liqueurs by 6.8% (P=0.004), wine by 8.9% (P=0.033), alcoholic sodas and ciders by 13.9% (P=0.067), beer by 1.5% (P=0.043) and all alcoholic drinks by 3.4 % (P=0.007).
Conclusions: Increases in minimum prices of alcoholic beverages can substantially reduce alcohol consumption.
(Source: Alcohol Reports, 01/10/12) Full Report (pdf)

An article in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization raises concerns regarding conflict of interest in a partnership where SABMiller, the world’s second largest brewer by sales volume, receive funding from the Global Fund for a HIV/AIDS prevention project in drinking establishements in South Africa.
„No conflict of interest“ replies the Global Fund.
The recent issue of Bulletin of the World Health Organization carries a round table section: „Global Fund collusion with liquor giant is a clear conflict of interest. The First article is by Richard Matzopoulos, Charles DH Parry, Joanne Corrigall, Jonny Myers, Sue Goldstein and Leslie London. They describe how the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) has recently included SABMiller as a recipient of funding for an education intervention aimed at minimizing alcohol-related harm, including HIV prevention, among men in drinking establishments.The authors think Global Fund support for this initiative is cause for concern.

The article discusses whether men in drinking establishments are the best target group for the intervention, whether a drinking establishment is the best location, and whether the educational intervention itself is effective. Their experience is that the liquor industry is inclined to support alcohol interventions that will not affect drinking rates at a population level. These interventions allow the industry to simultaneously fulfil social and legal obligations to address the harmful use of alcohol while ensuring that sales and profits are maintained.

Providing funding for a highly profitable industry that could afford to fund its own interventions also reduces the funds available for less well-resourced organizations.

Ask the authors: „Do we take it that the problem of “corporate capture” has now spread to one of the largest health funders in the world?“ …
(Source: Alcohol Reports, 01/08/12) add-recources.org, 01/05/12
Comment: At least the industry accepted the role of alcohol regarding HIV.

On January 1, 1991, the federal excise tax on beer doubled, and the tax rates on wine and liquor increased as well. These changes are larger than the typical state-level changes that have been used to study the effect of price on alcohol abuse and its consequences. In this paper, we develop a method to estimate some important effects of those large 1991 changes, exploiting the interstate differences in alcohol consumption.

We demonstrate that the relative importance of drinking in traffic fatalities is closely tied to per capita alcohol consumption across states. As a result, we expect that the proportional effects of the federal tax increase on traffic fatalities would be positively correlated with per capita consumption. We demonstrate that this is indeed the case, and infer estimates of the price elasticity and lives saved in each state. We repeat this exercise for other injury-fatality rates, and for nine categories of crime. For each outcome, the estimated effect of the tax increase is negatively related to average consumption, and that relationship is highly significant for the overall injury death rate, the violent crime rate, and the property crime rate. A conservative estimate is that the federal tax reduced injury deaths by 4.7%, or almost 7,000, in 1991. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 01/02/11) NBER Working Paper No. 17709, Dec. 2011

EUROPEAN COMMISSION, HEALTH & CONSUMERS DIRECTORATE-GENERAL, Directorate C – Public Health and Risk Assessment
Unit C4 – Health Determinants, Brussels 17 November 2011
Summary Report, 12/22/11

The Appellate Body, on 21 December 2011, issued its reports in the case “Philippines — Taxes on Distilled Spirits” (WT/DS396/AB/R and WT/DS403/AB/R).
> Appellate Body Report: http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news11_e/396_403abr_e.htm