Health risk and social costs make drinking alcohol a very poor risk

By David McElroy · March 26, 2018

If I handed you a box of rat poison and urged you to take a bite or two, you would shove it back and angrily ask, “Why in the world would I consume poison on purpose?!”

Every time I see people drinking alcohol, I ask myself that question. I can’t figure out why anyone intentionally consumes something which is known to cause cancer and which can cause a host of other health problems. The biggest puzzle to me, though, is why people consume alcohol when they can look around them and see the social costs — deaths, injuries, addictions, destruction of families, and a host of other issues.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last few days because of a Canadian radio documentary I heard last week. CBC’s “Ideas” program has an episode called “Alcohol: Tonic or Toxin” and I strongly recommend you listen to it. (It’s 54 minutes long, but it’s worth the time.)

When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the risks associated with alcohol — and the grave consequences it caused for so many people — and decided it was a stupid risk. So I decided even before I was old enough to legally drink that it wasn’t something I wanted in my life. The closest I’ve ever come to taking a drink is when I have NyQuil or some sort of cough medicine. So I come at this from the perspective of someone who never started the habit of consuming alcohol, not from the perspective of someone who’s having to fight off an addictive demon — as is the case with so many people I know.

In the radio documentary, I was struck by an interview with one of the doctors involved in setting some of the world’s first “limits for safe drinking” a few decades ago. This group of British doctors set some level of alcohol consumption that they considered safe — and those limits stuck around for years.

But this doctor admits now that they had no basis for saying that any alcohol consumption was safe. He admits that they knew this, but he said they knew the recommendation wouldn’t be taken seriously if they recommended people quit drinking alcohol entirely. So he said they essentially pulled the limits out of thin air. He also says the group was influenced by the fact that they all drank, too, and they simply didn’t think anybody — even the doctors themselves — would stop.

Most people in this country drink — and if you watch movies or televisions shows, you might assume that everybody drinks unless he’s a recovering alcoholic. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who don’t drink has mostly stayed in the range of 30 percent to 40 percent over the last 75 years. (I’m a bit surprised there are this many of us.)

When I was younger, there was a presumption that not drinking was mostly a moral issue, but I think it’s a mistake to see it that way. For me, it’s simply a question of what’s rational and reasonable. I don’t recommend using alcohol for some of the same reasons I don’t recommend people smoke cigarettes. The risk isn’t worth it for either, but I’d say the social costs are far higher for alcohol.

There are quite a number of people who dearly love their poison. For many, it’s a hobby or a passion. They collect wines or become experts at different beers. Among those for whom it’s caused no visible harm, there’s a strong emotional reaction to the idea that alcohol is dangerous. It’s even considered a big deal to try to go a month without drinking. (Read what happened when this writer gave up booze for a month.)

For a lot of people, their social world centers around alcohol and they can’t imagine not drinking. I’ve had people tell me that almost everybody hates the taste — of wine or beer, depending on the person — but “you’ll get used to it” and eventually like it. But I’ve always wondered why someone would intentionally “get used to” something he didn’t like from the beginning — if what you’re primarily gaining is social acceptance and “more personality” among a certain group of people.

I don’t want to ban alcohol. I don’t even want to force companies to put warning labels on their products. The information is there for anybody who wants to find it. But I wish more people would ask themselves why they would intentionally take this poison into their bodies.

The facts are very clear. Alcohol is a poison. It does harm to your body in multiple ways. Those who say alcohol hasn’t caused problems for them — and think this means it’s safe — overlook the fact there are also plenty of smokers who never develop lung cancer, but they don’t question the truth that smoking makes it more likely you’ll get cancer. Although there was a time in history when alcoholic drinks were safer than the water supplies, we’re well past that today. The health risks are serious and the social costs are outrageous.

I choose to keep alcohol out of my life and I want that for my family. For the same reason I want to teach my future children to eat in healthier ways than I learned, I also want them to grow up being clear about the serious dangers of recreational drugs — starting with alcohol, which is the most dangerous drug of all.

If you want to keep drinking alcohol, you’re going to find a justification to do so. That’s fine with me. I’m not going to try to stop you. But for those who are willing to think seriously about it, the facts are clear that alcohol is a terrible risk.

Consuming alcohol makes no more sense than intentionally consuming any other poison. That’s not hyperbole. It’s simply the truth.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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