Europeans Are World’s Biggest Smokers and Drinkers

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.

While tobacco has been linked with cancer for years, smoking also increases heart risks, research has shown. Drinking too much alcohol has been associated with a greater chance of developing cancers including breast and colon tumors, as well as heart disease.
Male Smokers

More than half of men smoke in Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Turkey, while alcohol consumption is highest in Moldova, Luxembourg, Estonia and the Czech Republic, according to the report.

“It’s quite striking that alcohol consumption in the European region is the highest in the world,” said Andy Haines, professor of public health and primary care at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, at the press conference. “A lot of work needs to be done. That’s partly a matter of pricing.”

Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iceland have the region’s lowest smoking rates, while alcohol consumption is lowest in predominantly Muslim countries such as Tajikistan, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The WHO highlighted marked health disparities across the region. While average life expectancy increased by five years to 76 between 1980 and 2010, it declined for men in eastern Europe, the report said.

Life expectancy for men is lowest in Russia, at 62.8 years, and highest in Israel, at 80.1 years. Kyrgyzstan has the lowest life expectancy for women, 73 years, while Spain has the highest, of 85 years.
Economic Crisis

Spain’s economic crisis threatens to erode that advantage, the WHO said. In general, every 3 percent increase in unemployment is associated with an almost 5 percent increase in suicides and self-inflicted injuries, according to the report. A third of all unemployed people in the euro region are in Spain, where the jobless rate is forecast to reach about 27 percent this year.

“We will have to keep an eye on the economic situation in Spain to see if this has an effect on life expectancy,” Stein said.

Mental and behavioral disorders are highest in Nordic countries such as Finland, Iceland and Denmark.

Eastern Europe is home to the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic, and in some eastern countries rates of premature death from heart disease are increasing in defiance of the overall trend, the report shows.

Russian women have 951 abortions for every 1,000 live births, double the rate in Romania, the nation with the next highest rate of pregnancy terminations, according to the report. Russia’s rate has more than halved since 1993, the WHO said.

France and the Netherlands each spend almost 12 percent of gross domestic product on health care, the highest in the region, while Turkmenistan spends 2.5 percent, the least. The U.S. spends about 18 percent of GDP on health care, according to government forecasts.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/europeans-are-world-s-biggest-smokers-and-drinkers-who.html

 

and yet their life expectancies all beat America

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

 

unfortunately tobacco and liquor corps have lobbied against a lot of proper anti-tobacco & anti-alcohol bills. and corps defend their interests with any and all means they have.

 

While the tobacco and liquor corps are rather unscrupulous and while it's good and proper to educate people on the risks of smoking and drinking, people ought to have the right to smoke and drink or take other drugs as much as they please. After all we're each the sole owner of our body.

 

sure but they must be prepared to pay higher insurance premiums

 

Actually if anything the premiums should be lower. I don't drink much, but with the amount I smoke it's unlikely that I'll live to need a new hip or years and years of care in an old peoples home. My insurance ought to be grateful that I'll probably die of cancer - or even better a quick heart-attack - decades before I'd die of cancer or a heart attack if I was a non-smoker. Decades of increasing doctor's bills that I spare them.

 

and yet every single one of the European nations spends less on health care than the US does.

 

nonsense, the money spent in the last 6 months of your life as youre dying will be far more than that. ask an actuary

 

The thing is: however healthy I live, these last expensive 6 months of my life will come eventually. There's no getting around it. The question is how much I will have cost my insurance beforehand. If I'm 95 before these last expensive months it's very likely that I will have cost my insurance more than if I'm 65 when they set in. Longevity in an ever older demographic is what creates problems for our health-care system.

 

The United States is a long way from having the oldest median age, and yet it still pays more for health care than any other nation in the world.

 

dying of old age is far cheaper than cancer treatments

 

sounds cool but can't say that i agree with this statement.
this point has any side effects >

[video=youtube;zBFl5-4Ol4g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBFl5-4Ol4g[/video]

 

What do you think old people die of? The older you get the higher the risk to develop cancer, Alzheimer other degenerative diseases.

My mother (who always had an incredibly healthy lifestyle) is going to be 70 this year and even though she’s quite fit for her age she is already starting to cost her health insurance more than she pays in because of various age-related illnesses. If she lives to be a hundred (which I sincerely hope) that will not only be expensive for her health insurance, it will in all likelihood eat up all her life-savings. Ever been to an old people's care home and wondered how much it costs? I’ve worked in one and can tell you it’s mind-bogglingly expensive.

But even if I join you for the moment in your assumption that short-lived smokers are a higher cost factor for health-insurances than long-lived non-smokers and thus should pay higher premiums: where do you want to stop?

Should overweight people pay higher premiums? People with pre-existing risks of breast cancer in the family? Should we have a system which allows our health-insurance to monitor us 24/7 to find out whether we’ve just had a bar of chocolate and then were to lazy to go to the gym, so that they can adjust our premiums accordingly? I kind of can envisage a “Brave New World” like future here and I don’t like it.

 

That's because the US' health-system is incredibly ineffective. Even after the recent reforms US-tax-payers are held captive by the financial interests of the pharma-industry/health-insurance companies.

 

Yes, Crocodile is the most scary drug I've ever heard of. Provided that those who start taking it are utterly informed on its gruesome effects (which they are probably not), the main question should be why so many young Russians are ready to commit what's basically a slow suicide.

If you look at what's probably still the most suicidal drug in the West, heroin, the amazing fact is that one could theoretically live a long and productive life as an addict if one had access to legal, cheap and pure heroin. It's the illegality of it which makes the price so high and the heroin dangerously impure that it drives people into ruin.

 

the crocodile is cheaper and more available than heroin

like kurt cobain or jim morrison? the effects of heroin are too destructive as well.

 

all drugs are destructive. alcohol destroys far more

 

that's right

so-called "hard drugs" like crocodile or heroin are more destructive than alcohol.

 

feel free to provide a scale of destructiveness.

 

so is nicotine.

 

to say the same thing to drug dealers

 

im sure that made sense to someone

 

i like the way you think

 

Look at Keith Richards who didn’t have the desire to top himself and unlike most people was rich enough to afford being a heroin addict.

Yes, if you want to you can easily commit suicide with an overdose of heroin. What’s worse: you can easily take an accidental overdose if you get your heroin from a shady dealer and can’t be sure how pure it is.

That it takes much longer to drink yourself to death (like Amy Whinehouse did) does not mean that alcohol is less dangerous. In fact this article suggests that alcohol is just as dangerous as crack or heroine: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/01/alcohol-more-harmful-than-heroin-crack

That doesn’t mean that I want alcohol (or any other drug) to be made illegal. As I said I don’t think it is the state’s business to keep informed adults from doing harm to themselves by consuming drugs if they want to.

 

bingo!!