I 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 dr

I 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.