[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: World Health Organization report on the harmful use of alcohol

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Wilson, Ken

I was reading the latest issue of Nature and found an interesting article titled "Health policy: Regulate alcohol for global health"  Here is the URL for this article, which has a graph showing that alcohol abuse is the third largest health burden for the world, after Childhood underweight (huge problem in low income countries) and Unsafe sex.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/bruni-whitney-houston-and-alcohols-toll.html?scp=2&sq=alcohol%20abuse&st=cse

The article references a WHO report that I have attached, titled: "Global Strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol".  The report is aimed at a problem that is common for most countries - overconsumption of alcohol.  I particularly recommend the following sections of this report:

Introduction - Paragraphs 1-5 (pg 5)
Policy Opetions and interventions - paragraphs 18-23  (pp 11-13)
Availability of Alcohol - paragraphs 27 - 28 (pp 14-15)
Marketing of alcoholic beverages - paragraphs 29-31 (pp 15-16)
Pricing policies - paragraphs 32 - 34) pp 16

Most of this is in bullet form and easy to read.  It talks directly about issues that we face here in Boulder.  Here is the URL, and I have attached a PDF copy.

http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/alcstratenglishfinal.pdf


There is an article in today's NY Times on the social cost of alcohol as well.  here is the URL for the Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/bruni-whitney-houston-and-alcohols-toll.html?scp=2&sq=alcohol%20abuse&st=cse

I hope everyone finds these helpful as we deal with real issues of public health and safety here in Boulder that are the result of overconsumption of alcohol.  I don't think there is any doubt that this is the #1 public health issue in Boulder, especially among young people.

Respectfully,

Ken Wilson
Council member
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