In an article published in the Australian Doctor, the University of Sydney’s Professor of Public Health, Simon Chapman, quotes some interesting figures comparing mortality from alcohol consumption to that from tobacco and illicit drugs. The national figures from 1998 (from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) reveals that 19,019 people were killed through tobacco use and 1,023 from illicit drugs. 2,524 people lost their lives through alcohol, but another 4,995 deaths were saved (all related to people 65 and older), resulting in a net benefit of 2,471 lives. Perhaps these figures might be drummed again and again into the consciousness of the neo-prohibitionists who frame Australia’s health and taxation policies.
