- A British study asked lawyers, social workers, doctors, and health visitors to list possible explanations for violence within a family. Doctors and lawyers put alcohol at the top of the list. Social workers ranked it as the number two problem. Health visitors listed it as the third major cause.
- Norwegian researchers analyzed trends in alcohol consumption since World War II and compared those figures with the incidents of violent death during the same time. Their finds: "a significant correlation between changes in alcohol consumption and rates of violent death."
- Nine out of ten manslaughter and murder cases during one year in one Danish community involved alcohol. Forty-three percent of violent assault cases treated at hospitals in the same community during the same time were also related to alcohol use.
- A U.S. Department of Justice survey : estimates that nearly one third of the nation's 523,000 state-prison inmates drank heavily before committing such crimes as rapes, burglaries, and assaults. 1
- 400,000 Americans die because of drink each year.
- 76 million Americans--about 43 percent of the adult population of the United States--have been exposed to alcoholism in their families.
- Some estimates place roughly half of the average Soviet family's food budget going toward alcohol consumption, despite limited economic resources.
- According to medical authorities, at least 40 percent of the [former] U.S.S.R's 287 million inhabitants are alcoholic or experience severe health and social problems as a result of drinking. As many as 60 percent of factory workers are considered to have severe drinking problems.2
1 Dispatch International (The International Commission
for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency
[ICPAJ. 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD.
20904, USA), p. 1.
2 Alcohol Facts (I.C.P.A.), p. 1.
