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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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It's the opposite. They are trying to deny and obfuscate because they oppose differences and want to talk about it in a politically correct manner. So there are debunkers pretending the issue doesn't exist and is just a negative stereotype. In the past there was a complete prohibition of alcohol sales to "Native Americans" .

Like many real issues, you are also going to find some talking about it.

There is in a fact a bigger problem of drunkedness, people being addicted to alcohol and dying in part due to that. Maybe they abuse the alcohol also for reasons of being impulsive, IQ related and so on but it doesn't change that the combo of them and alcohol works worse. Both in terms of behavior and health.

but it's hard for me to look at Germany and France and think that they're actually missing out on a ton of longevity and productivity due to all the beer and wine.

The issue is quantifiable. Even outside alcohol, when it comes to drugs one can see an increase of drug abuse in certain european countries due to less policing and a more pro drug culture.

Germany is still going to be better than muslim countries but Germans would live longer without alcohol consumption.

Sure, it is manageable even if it is probably among the top negative behaviors that affect life expectancy in countries like Germany. That is because Germans don't have that many problems and are successful. Most Muslim countries have more significant problems to worry about.

The issue becomes especially notable in some eastern european countries where it actually plays a more significant effect for bellow 80 years old life expectancy. Even in Germany, for alcohol abusers it does eat years from their life.

Men in Belarus live only 68 years and this was the country that had the highest alcohol consumption in the world in 2010! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31960526/

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/17/heaviest-drinking-countries/9146227/

  1. Belarus

Alcohol per capita (APC) consumption: 17.5 liters Pct. binge drinking: 26.5% (14th highest) Pct. of deaths, alcohol-related: 34.7% (the highest) Life expectancy at birth: 72.1 years

Life expectancies in the nations with heavy alcohol use are also shorter. The average life expectancy at birth in high income nations was 79.3 years as of 2012, far higher than in almost all of the heaviest drinking nations. In Romania, the average life expectancy was just 68.7 years. In Russia and Ukraine the average life expectancy was below 72 years as well.

Anyway, comparing countries like Germany with the worst is a losing game. You either compare with other successful societies that do certain things differently, or try to estimate how it would do, if it did things differently.

Now, you could argue that drinking is a common part of German culture, and although it can be done in moderation or you can have to the other extreme Eastern Europe type of disaster.

Here are some numbers of the top of a few seconds searching

The use of psychoactive substances is one of the main risk factors for the global burden of disease and premature mortality (1). In 2019, worldwide tobacco use was responsible for approximately 229 million disability-adjusted life years (DALY) and 8.71 million deaths. A total of 2.44 million deaths were attributable to the consumption of alcohol and 494,000 to the use of illegal drugs (2, 3). Thus, based on the total number of annual deaths (56.53 million), a fifth (11.64 million) are accounted for by the use of psychoactive substances (3). Despite an observed decline in the consumption of alcohol since the 1990s, Germany is among the 10 countries worldwide with the highest per capita consumption rates (4, 5). The proportion of smokers in 2019 was also above the West European average (6).

https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/226333/The-use-of-psychoactive-substances-in-Germany-findings-from-the-Epidemiological-Survey-of-Substance-Abuse-2021

So based on the above numbers, it is 4.32% of total mortality.