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According to the Mayo Clinic “each year more than 100,000 Americans die of alcohol-related causes and alcohol is a factor in nearly half of all U.S. traffic deaths.” That means about every 10 days alcohol kills as many people as the September 11 attacks.

In the UK 22,000 people die from alcohol related causes per year. Since moving to the UK I’ve noticed how many people have a drug problem here, especially with alcohol. The pub culture is so deeply ingrained in British society that it takes a heavy toll. But not only in Britain it is a problem. The son of my father’s cousin went on a trip to the Dominican Republic with his girlfriend. At a party they were offered free alcoholic drinks. And here is the irony of the story, because normally he doesn’t drink alcohol, but because it was free he had a drink. Later he had an argument with his girlfriend and went back to the hotel room. When she returned too she found him dead lying on his bed because he choked to death on his own vomit. He was a young and handsome guy. This free drink was the most expensive mistake of his short life. Anyway this is just one story, another one I’ve heard is from one of my class mates whose younger sister was killed together with another child by a drunk driver.

The British government pays a lot of money for adverts on television to warn of alcohol abuse. But if a few minutes later there is an advert from a beer or vodka company encouraging you to drink alcohol then it seems a bit pointless. Alcohol is an addictive substance so if some ads tell you to drink responsibly how much an effect do you think that has? So I’m definitely for outlawing advertising alcoholic drinks. Also I think that alcohol is too cheap. It should reflect the damage it inflicts on society. Another thing that really bothers me are TV ads in general which mostly try to sell products to you which you do not need. You might think that TV ads are harmless but in reality the big corporations shape our society through them. They are given a tool to program and control the minds of especially young people. By the time a child has grown up it has seen thousands and thousands of adverts where happy beautiful people drink beer, eat fatty food, etc. So I think its a big mistake to give big corporations this kind of powerful mind control. Its an illusion to think because of the ads we are better off because we don’t have to pay a TV licence. Society pays a much higher price because of the influence these ads have. For instance if we ban alcohol commercials we easily could save millions of dollars in rehabilitation and lost working hours. These alone could cover the TV licence and we still would have free TV without the brainwashing.

In any case I doubt we will really solve the problem as long as our Western society doesn’t reject alcohol like we do with heroin or other heavy drugs. I’m not in favour of banning alcohol but everybody who drinks alcohol, even if its in a reasonable way is part of the problem not the solution because its like a voice saying alcohol is not a problem in our society. If you are strong enough to say no to alcohol other people will follow this example.

Think about it, every day women are beaten by alcohol abuser, people killed by drunk drivers, families destroyed, children born with disabilities because their mothers were drinking during pregnancy. Famous people like George Best, Bon Scott, Jim Morrison, Edgar Allan Poe, and many more died too early because of alcohol abuse. Famous or not every life counts.

I don’t know if you’ve read about the “Chaos theory”, a famous example is the “Butterfly Effect” which states that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in China can effect the weather in another country thousands of miles away. I don’t know if that’s true but everything you do will have an effect on other people. For example if you decide to drink alcohol, then maybe your children will drink too because of your influence, they themselves will have an effect on their friends and so on. And its basically just a question of time until someone is influenced who can’t handle it and will cause harm to himself or other people. Like Maximus says in “The Gladiator” movie “What we do in life, echoes through eternity”. Think about.

I suspect as long as somebody makes huge profits through the alcohol industry and our society isn’t smart enough to see the bigger picture, not much will change. If you drink you support an industry which is indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people next year, and it could be someone you know and love. Be smart and become a non-drinker and possibly save a life, maybe even your own.