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Study done in the UK. Hmm... I've been around Brits a lot. My subjective impression is that they drink like fish. But let's turn to Science! Recorded per capi
by AlbertCory 3y ago
Study done in the UK. Hmm...
I've been around Brits a lot. My subjective impression is that they drink like fish. But let's turn to Science!
Recorded per capita consumption of pure alcohol (litres) per adult 15 years of age and over per year (2016)
Germany 13.4
U.K. 11.4
Spain 10.0
U.S. 9.8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...
- stavros 3y agoThis is a really odd table. The UK and Greece are one liter apart, but the cultures are vastly, greatly different. It kind of makes me question the whole metric, or at least whether it has any bearing on how people actually drink socially.
- jjgreen 3y agoIndeed, partly to do with the "opening hours", pubs only open 11:30-3:00, then 7:00-11:00 (or thereabouts), introduced during WW1. It meant that you had to get drunk fast, and although the rules have now been relaxed, it takes a while for a culture to adapt to new conditions.
- stavros 3y agoIn Greece, though, the goal isn't to get drunk at all. You see very few drunk people in the streets, at any hour of the night. Usually everyone will just nurse 1-2 drinks the whole night, which is a stark contrast from the UK.
- jjgreen 3y agoNice to see there is a bit of variety in the world.
- stavros 3y agoIt is, though the culture clash is sometimes awkward when you're out with your coworkers one night, they get pass-out drunk, and then next day you say something about it at work and everyone looks at you like "we don't talk at work about what we do in the bar".
- jjgreen 3y agoThey may be looking at you with a "what? I can't remember a thing after the second round of vodkas"
- stavros 3y agoNo, they later told me not to mention in the office what happens on a night out. I'd prefer not to do things with my coworkers I'll later be embarrassed about, but I guess it's just different cultures.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> makes me question the whole metric, or at least whether it has any bearing on how people actually drink socially. The data is the data. Where is it claimed that it summarizes "the whole culture"? What data would you look at for that?
- stavros 3y agoI expected much more correlation between the drinking culture and the amount of alcohol consumed. If the difference between drunk people in the streets and civility on a night out is 10%, I wonder what happens in countries that don't drink at all.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> correlation between the drinking culture and the amount of alcohol consumed. how do you quantify "the drinking culture"?
- Eumenes 3y agoI have a friend that growing up would talk non-stop about how backwards the US was for having a 21 year old drinking age, compared to Europe where it wasn't as "normalized" ... I feel vindicated looking at these stats.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- leetcrew 3y agoI don't think the per capita figures prove your friend wrong here. my napkin math indicates that 10L / year of pure alcohol equates to about 1.5 standard US drinks per day. so the US average is a bit below that and DE is closer to 2 per day on average. if everyone actually drank 1-2 drinks per day, alcohol would not be a big deal. it's probably not ideal for public health, but the antisocial behaviors associated with alcohol abuse would be vanishingly rare. but that's not actually what we see. we do see lots of collisions caused by drunk drivers, fights breaking out at bars, domestic abuse, etc. the issue with this statistic is that most Americans don't drink everyday. a small part of the population drives the average up by drinking way more than the others. this is all a long way of saying the distribution shape probably matters a lot more than a 40% difference in average consumption.
- lucozade 3y agoThe drinking age in Lithuania is 20 and they come in at 15 litres/year. Anyway, it's likely to be largely cultural. If you look at the US, it varies hugely by state. New Hampshire, for example, is something like 17.5 litres per year. Brits are rank amateurs in comparison.
- Jerrrry 3y agoAsk them what they think about teenagers drinking energy drinks. The dichotomy is so full of cognitive dissonance it's a decent litmus test for self awareness.
- dwroberts 3y agoI don’t really see the relevance of this. The point the study is making is that people may be physically unable to provide a valid sample for reasons beside being obstructive, but they will be charged for obstruction any way. So that includes people who could be completely sober. It’s nothing to do with actual alcohol consumption.
- AlbertCory 3y agoIt does have to do with the motivation for writing this in the first place.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoUnless you prohibit alcohol entirely (which would be challenging both technically and socially), you'll still need to check sobriety to enforce the law against drink-driving. So say the UK was only 1 litre on your list: would you then say that nobody should be charged with drink-driving?
- AlbertCory 3y agoI don't even know how to answer a hypothetical like that.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoNo problem. Just stagger home or take a cab.