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Alkoholpolitik und Volksgesundheit

USA: The Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Public Health

Samstag 9. Juli 2011 von htm

The Amethyst Initiative, signed by more than 100 college presidents and other higher education officials calls for a reexamination of the minimum legal drinking age in the United States.
A central argument of the initiative is that the U.S. minimum legal drinking age policy results in more dangerous drinking than would occur if the legal drinking age were lower….
Does the age-21 drinking limit in the United States reduce alcohol consumption by young adults and its harms, or as the signatories of the Amethyst Initiative contend, is it „not working“?
In this paper, we summarize a large and compelling body of empirical evidence which shows that one of the central claims of the signatories of the Amethyst Initiative is incorrect: setting the minimum legal drinking age at 21 clearly reduces alcohol consumption and its major harms. … (Source: Alcohol Reports, 07/06/11)

Kategorie: Allgemein, Availability, Global, Legal Drinking Age, Prevention, Research, safe level, societal effects, Youth | Keine Kommentare »

TOP NEWS: USA: Buzz kills. No amount of alcohol safe to drive

Dienstag 21. Juni 2011 von htm

In the United States, the blood-alcohol limit may be 0.08 percent, but no amount of alcohol seems to be safe for driving, according to a University of California, San Diego sociologist. A study led by David Phillips and published in the journal Addiction finds that blood-alcohol levels well below the U.S. legal limit are associated with incapacitating injury and death.
Phillips, with coauthor Kimberly M. Brewer, also of UC San Diego, examined official data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). This dataset includes information on all persons in the U.S. who were involved in fatal car accidents – 1,495,667 people in the years 1994 to 2008. The researchers used FARS because it is nationally comprehensive, covering all U.S. counties, all days of the week and all times of day, and, perhaps most important, reports on blood-alcohol content in increments of 0.01.
All the accidents included in FARS are, by definition, severe. But the authors looked at different levels of accident severity by examining the ratio of severe injuries to minor ones.
„Accidents are 36.6 percent more severe even when alcohol was barely detectable in a driver’s blood,“ Phillips said. Even with a BAC of 0.01, Phillips and Brewer write, there are 4.33 serious injuries for every non-serious injury versus 3.17 for sober drivers.
… We hope that our study might influence not only U.S. legislators, but also foreign legislators, in providing empirical evidence for lowering the legal BAC even more,“ Phillips said. „Doing so is very likely to reduce incapacitating injuries and to save lives.“ (Source: Alcohol Reports, 06/20/11) eurekalert.org, 06/20/11

Kategorie: Allgemein, consumption, Driving under the Influence, Global, morbidity, mortality, Politics, Prevention, Research, safe level, societal effects, Statistics | Keine Kommentare »

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