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YOU SAID WHAT?!
Wine
Have a drink, or don't
two things to talk about
We should be so lucky or blessed
Brilliant or Twisted?
iMonk podcast 87
Superbowl Hindsight
The Ratings thing
Shaddout Weekend post
As you undoubtedly noticed, I like comics. I wouldn't call myself a "fan boy" because I don't give a flying FOOM what they are worth. That said, almost all the images on my blog are scanned from comics I own, and it would be frankly impossible to tell you where each one comes from specifically.
Many are © and/or ® Marvel Comics Group, with all rights reserved.
Others are © and/or ® DC Comics, which is an arm of Time/Warner, and not only are all rights reserved but they are a little jealous about it, so if I get "the letter" from them, those images are just going to turn into blank spots until I configure out what to do about that.
There are also the occasional images from Valiant, Image, Defiant, and some indies which I'm not sure even have a name, and they are all also © and/or ®, all rights reserved.
All other images not covered by this disclaimer are the property of their respective owners, and if you are one of those people and you see your image on my blog, tell me what you want me to do about it and I will. No sense making people angry.
Hope that helps.
- 61% of American adults drank alcohol in the last year where stats are available (2004); that means roughly 183 million Americans drank alcohol that year.
- 32% of those had 5 or more drinks on at least one day; that means roughly 59 million Americans abused alcohol at least once in 2004.
- 21,081 alcohol-related deaths were reported in the same year, including all deaths from alcoholic liver disease. That equals 0.035% of all -abusers-, and 0.0115% of all -users-. Converted to deaths per 100,000, that's 11.5 deaths per 100,000 users, and 35 deaths per 100,000 abusers. This, btw, is the worst-case scenario as I will openly admit that some alcohol-related deaths are to people who are victims of others' abuse.
- CDC records also indicate that in the U.S. in 2005, the number of deaths by accident/unintentional causes in the general population was 37.7 per 100,000. Deaths by cancer in the general population in the same year were 185.8 per 100,000. Deaths by heart disease were 217 per 100,000 in the general population.
- To spell that out as clearly as possible, someone who is abusing alcohol has the same likelihood of dying by accident as by alcohol-related circumstances; he is 5 times more likely to die by cancer than by alcohol-related circumstances; he is almost 6 times more likely to die from heart disease than by alcohol-related circumstances.
- The average alcohol user is 3 times more likely to die by accident than through alcohol-related circumstances, 16 times more likely to die from cancer than through alcohol-related circumstances, and almost 20 times more likely to die from heart disease than through alcohol-related circumstances.
- For the record, 59,664 people died from the flu in the same year -- 2.8 times as many as died from alcohol-related circumstances.
Here's what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that any of these deaths are not tragic: they are all tragic and take a toll on real families. What I am actually outlining here is that the moral argument against alcohol use has to take into account that more people die by accident than from alcohol-related circumstances annually; far more people die from the flu than from alcohol-related circumstances.
Let's keep that in mind as we advance toward the discussion of the moral ills of all alcohol abuse.
Labels: alcohol, Baptists - pheh
