Europeans Are World’s Biggest Smokers and Drinkers: WHO

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/europeans-are-world-s-biggest-smokers-and-drinkers-who.html

Europeans are the world’s biggest smokers and drinkers, according to a World Health Organization report that says higher prices on cigarettes and alcohol in the region may help curb the death and disease they cause.

On average, 27 percent of people over 15 smoke across the 53 nations that make up the WHO’s European region, higher than in any other part of the world, the Geneva-based agency said today in its triennial health report on the continent, home to 900 million people. Europeans also consume an average of 10.6 liters of alcohol a year, more than in any other region, according to the report.

The two habits are the main contributors to cancer and heart disease, which account for 70 percent of all deaths, as well as respiratory illnesses, the WHO said. Lower prices are linked to higher demand and the deleterious health effects of smoking and alcohol abuse, the agency said.

“When you look at the region as a whole, smoking and alcohol are some of the most important lifestyle factors that are causing death and disability,” said Claudia Stein, director of the division of information, evidence, research and innovation at WHO, at a press conference in London.

[Fumesucker]

1. And yet they live longer than abstemious Americans

Go figure.

[HiPointDem]

2. +1

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. That'd be healthcare access and a few other factors

exercise and lifestyle, for instance (people walk more in Europe, because in most of Europe people live in urban environments in cities and towns that were built for people, not cars; Europeans also tend to eat somewhat less unhealthy diets because of the availability of locally-farmed meat and produce and the total lack of high-fructose corn syrup in the average European diet).

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. Also how they snuck in that 70% of all deaths rather than the figure for

European deaths. After playing with WHOs fascinating database tools, I came up with an aggregate of smoking related European Deaths due to smoking related disease of about 40%, and that includes an absurdly wide variation within the nations reported. Doesn't fit Bloomberg's narrative very well at all. YMMV.

I believe, and have never found any evidence to the contrary, that the biggest killers are stress and living in a toxic environment which doesn't bode well for America.

[Quantess]

3. A big problem with this article is that it's a broadbrush of "Europeans"

As though Turkey, Norway, Moldova, Russia, and Portugal belong to a homogenous group.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Soviet Union?

Russia probably skews the numbers all on its own, I've seen figures for smoking rates there fo 60% of the male population.

[Quantess]

5. Whoops, that was a brain fart.

Thanks.