China, India boosting global booze binge: study

Paris

THE world consumed 10 per cent more alcohol per adult in 2017 than in 1990, due in large part to heavier and more widespread drinking in China and India, researchers said on Wednesday.

On current trends, global consumption per capita will rise another 17 per cent over the next decade, they reported in The Lancet.

By 2030 half of all adults worldwide will drink alcohol, and almost a quarter will binge drink at least once a month, according to projections covering 189 countries.

"The world is not on track to achieve global targets to reduce harmful alcohol use," the authors said, calling for more aggressive counter-measures such as higher taxes and a ban on advertising.

The World Health Organization goal is to reduce "harmful alcohol use" by 10 per cent by 2025. Alcohol is linked to over 200 diseases and accounts for more than three million deaths - 75 per cent of them men - each year, the WHO has said.

"Before 1990, most alcohol was consumed in high-income countries, with the highest use levels recorded in Europe," said lead author Jakob Manthey, a researcher at the Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy in Dresden, Germany. "However, this pattern has changed substantially, with large reductions across Eastern Europe and vast increases in several middle-income countries such as China, India, and Vietnam."

While the broad trend lines are clear, they have yet to intersect.

In 2017 a higher percentage of adults 15 and older in Europe and North America still consumed alcohol - and more of it - than in other parts of the world. In France, for example, men drank the equivalent of 19 litres of pure alcohol, and women just under six, for a combined average of just over 12 litres.

Only 14 per cent of men never drank, and 29 per cent of women.

The 2017 figures for the US were somewhat lower - 15 and 4.5 litres for men and women, respectively, averaging just under 10 - with slightly higher percentages of teetotallers.

In China, men drank more than 11 litres of alcohol, mostly in the form of spirits and beer, while women imbibed three, for an average of just over seven litres. That was less than in the US, but a nearly 70 per cent jump from China's consumption in 1990.

By 2030, the two countries will have traded places: Chinese adults are projected to drink more than 10 litres on average, while US consumption of alcohol will drop slightly to 9.5 litres.

In India, a far smaller percentage of the population - 40 and 22 per cent of men and women, respectively - drank at all in 2017, on average less than six litres of pure alcohol. But that was double the figure for 1990, and the researchers forsee an additional 50 per cent increase by 2030. AFP