We have got into a terrible tizzy over SARS in the last week. We should be in a terrible tizzy all the time about diseases and infections that kill millions rather than a few hundred - and we in Ireland should be in a prolonged tizzy about a disease that has gnawed at Irish society for a long time: problems arising from the demon drink, writes Vincent Browne.
As of last Saturday the total worldwide death toll from SARS was 293. Ten times that number of children die every day from malaria, most of them in Africa. This statistic was revealed last week by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which reported that most of these deaths are preventable if new effective anti-malaria drugs were made available along with insecticide-treated nets.
Probably of more interest to us is another statistic reported by the WHO last week. It was that global cancer rates are likely to increase 15 per cent by 2020. In 2000, 10 million people developed malignant tumours and 6.2 million died from cancer.
By 2020 the death rate from cancer is likely to be 10 million, unless tobacco consumption is greatly reduced, a better lifestyle adopted and early detection through screening more widely available.
But it is the demon drink that I want to focus on today, and however irritating we may find the finger-wagging over levels of alcohol consumption, there is a problem. A major one. We are not the worst in the world. Argentina, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Moldova, Romania, Russia and Slovenia are worse.
But we are ahead of every other country in the world for which there are statistics. We now consume 14.2 litres of pure alcohol per year per person. You would think this would kill us. It is killing us.
In 1989 Ireland's per capita alcohol consumption was 7.6 litres. This had risen to 11.1 by 2000, an increase of 46 per cent, almost half. Only in three other European countries was there a rise in consumption during that period, and in each of these cases the rise was negligible, apart from the UK where consumption rose from 7.6 to 8.4 litres.
The one country in western Europe with a higher per capita consumption of alcohol, Luxembourg, showed a decline in consumption during the period, from 12.5 to 12.1 litres.
The Mediterranean countries that we associate with high levels of alcohol consumption - France, Spain, Italy and Greece - all showed declines in alcohol consumption levels during the period.
In 1989, all had levels above Ireland's. Now, all have levels below ours.
But the problem is even worse than suggested by these figures. It concerns young people.
More than half of the State's young people begin experimenting with alcohol before the age of 12. About one in five boys aged between 12 and 14 are current drinkers. In the 15-to-16-year age group, half of girls and two-thirds of boys are drinkers.
One-third of these 15- and 16-year- olds have engaged in binge- drinking, that is consuming five or more drinks in a row, enough to put most of us under the table. A quarter of these 15- and 16-year-olds have acknowledged they have been drunk in the last month.
(These figures are quoted in the Strategic Task Force Alcohol, Interim Report 2002, from The Health and Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey).
A 1999 survey on drinking habits (SLÁN) showed that over half of men and nearly two-thirds of women in the 18-to-24 age group engaged in "high-risk drinking" , which means consuming over 70 grams of pure alcohol for men and 50 grams for women.
In older age groups binge-drinking levels are dramatically lower: in the case of men less than half, and in the case of women about one-fifth.
More than a third of men in the 18-to-24 age group drink more than the recommended upper limit per week, while nearly two in five women do so in that age group.
According to Prof Robin Room of the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs at Stockholm University, who was commissioned by the Strategic Task Force to review the literature on whether reducing alcohol consumption would cut the rates of alcohol-related harm, "Male deaths from homicide seem to be particularly strongly associated with changes in the level of consumption (of alcohol) in Ireland."
The drink levels are already doing terrible health damage and, because of the increase in consumption, this is certain to increase.
And, by the way, the belief (which I shared) that there was always a major drink problem here, was incorrect. It certainly was never as serious as it is now.
For instance, in the 1950s, consumption levels per adult were about one-third of what they are today.
Next week I will deal with what we might do about the problem. In the meantime, a quiz: what self-interested observation did the drinks industry come up with to ensure that, whatever was done about this problem, it would not result in lower profits for themselves?
First prize will be a case of ... No. No prize.
vbrowne@irish-times.ie