The Ethics of Alcohol in America-Wrestling the Pink Elephant

Thumbnail image for Pink-Elephant-61825.jpgThere are certain pink elephants that are just so large and so much a fixture in our culture that they disappear from sight. And people are angered by the effort to discuss them. They become sacred to society and we don’t see them as a threat because “it’s just how things are.”

However, we still get startled by things more remote, such as when we see a headline where someone was murdered violently. As a society, we agree that it’s scary to think we or our children might contract AIDS or tuberculosis one day.

So why aren’t we afraid of alcohol consumption despite its role in the death of many people worldwide each year? Alcohol is good, right? You need it to celebrate…”cheers!” (clink!) It’s one of the most celebrated substances in the history of man. And yet, more people die from drinking alcohol every year than from violence, AIDS and tuberculosis combined. It’s hard to believe, but that is the finding of the World Health Organization in a global study released today.

It doesn’t seem fruitful to run through all the stories that repeat each year in the news, like the high school students who get drunk at the high school prom and die in a car accident that night (I’ve seen that news story four times since I started college in 1981), or the professional with a drinking problem who finally had to have an intervention before hurting himself or the business (I’ve seen three lawyers go through this). They are sad, tiresome stories that are lost on us because they don’t hit close enough to home to change our behaviors or perceptions of alcohol. “Honey did you read about this straight A student died in a rollover after prom last night. How horrible! What a waste. I need a drink.”

What seems more relevant and urgent to me is how alcohol changes our families. Yes, it is cliche’ to say there will be a heavy drinker in most extended families. But that fact has become more salient to me lately. Almost every close friend I have has had difficulty with a family member who is an angry drunk. I really don’t think people “abuse” alcohol. It abuses them. They can’t help but go to that negative hateful place when they drink, and it just takes one drink for them to lose control. No one consciously wants to be loathed by family members because they are horrible to be around when they drink. Mean drunks are annoying in a bar, but heartbreaking in a family gathering.

Why do we ignore the obvious? Probably to protect our own access to the occasional drink. If we admit alcohol is problematic, some overzealous pink elephant hunter will suddenly appear in a pithe helmet and want end all drinking. We like our drinks in the evening, and who can eat a good steak without a beer or red wine? It’s best to just not talk about it. Many of you reading this probably feel the tension that I’m going to get preachy about alcohol. Psych! That’s too easy. Open a cold one and read on…

But what of the 4 percent of us who will die because of alcohol this year? Do we ignore that too? You may notice that all the health reform and attention to morbid obesity includes lots of bashing of simple carbohydrates, like white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and white flour and the like. Michelle Obama wants us to exercise more. That’s great information. But alcohol is rarely addressed in these criticisms of obesity in America. Not only is the pink elephant obese due to the extra liquid calories, but alcohol is a sedative, so we burn less calories after we consume it because it slows down our metabolisms. But it’s not a source of criticism in most discussions about diabetes or morbid obesity. It’s odd the McDonalds gets the bad rap, but Budweiser is cool and has neat looking horses. Protect the elephant at all costs.

I saw something similar in Virginia when my family and I lived in a subdivision next to the Phillip Morris cigarette plant. It was huge and an impressive facility. They probably could have used dollar bills to roll the cigarettes if they ran out of rolling paper. The federal judge I worked for overheard me and another law clerk talking about the studies on how damaging tobacco products are on the human body. He stepped out of his mahogony panelled chambers to interject. “Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer. That’s ridiculous!” he exclaimed in our general direction. I remember thinking he must own stock in Phillip Morris, like most people in Richmond, Virginia do. Denial is a tricky beast.

I imagine we’ll continue to drink alcohol like we do now for the rest of time, only occasionally stopping to recognize some of us will get trampled by the pink elephant. Perhaps the ethics of alcohol in America is to balance our enjoyment of it with the responsiblity to educate our kids about the dangers of excess, especially if we have any family history of alcoholism, and to help our friends and family when they show signs of addiction. The latter is tough, however. I’ve been through it and no one will thank you for intervening.

That’s my goal. I hope you’ll consider it as well. I’ll continue to include one song in Ethics Follies® each year to provide resources for people to seek help with alcohol and drug addiction. For more on the annual ethics conference, visit

Below is the story about the study I mentioned above. Cheers!

World Health Organization Warns of Alcohol Deaths Worldwide

By Stephanie Nebehay




Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated countries in Africa and Asia, including India and South Africa, and binge drinking is a problem in many developed countries, the United Nations agency said. Yet alcohol control policies are weak and remain a low priority for most governments despite drinking’s heavy toll on society from road accidents, violence, disease, child neglect and job absenteeism, it said.

Approximately 2.5 million people die each year from alcohol related causes, the WHO said in its “Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health.”


In Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), every fifth death is due to harmful drinking, the highest rate.

“Worldwide, about 11 percent of drinkers have weekly heavy episodic drinking occasions, with men outnumbering women by four to one. Men consistently engage in hazardous drinking at much higher levels than women in all regions,” the report said.

Health ministers from the WHO’s 193 member states agreed last May to try to curb binge drinking and other growing forms of excessive alcohol use through higher taxes on alcoholic drinks and tighter marketing restrictions.

Disease and injury Alcohol is a causal factor in 60 types of diseases and injuries, according to WHO’s first report on alcohol since 2004.


“Six or seven years ago we didn’t have strong evidence of a causal relationship between drinking and breast cancer. Now we do,” Vladimir Poznyak, head of WHO’s substance abuse unit who coordinated the report, told Reuters.

Alcohol consumption rates vary greatly, from high levels in developed countries, to the lowest in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and southern Asia, whose large Muslim populations often abstain from drinking.

Homemade or illegally produced alcohol — falling outside governmental controls and tax nets — accounts for nearly 30 percent of total worldwide adult consumption. Some is toxic.

In France and other European countries with high levels of adult per capita consumption, heavy episodic drinking is rather low, suggesting more regular but moderate drinking patterns.

Light to moderate drinking can have a beneficial impact on heart disease and stroke, according to the WHO. “However, the beneficial cardio-protective effect of drinking disappears with heavy drinking occasions,” it said.

One of the most effective ways to curb drinking, especially among young people, is to raise taxes, the report said. Setting age limits for buying and consuming alcohol, and regulating alcohol levels in drivers, also reduce abuse if enforced.

Some countries restrict marketing of alcoholic beverages or on the industry’s sponsorship of sporting events.

“Yet not enough countries use these and other effective policy options to prevent death, disease and injury attributable to alcohol consumption,” the WHO said.

Alcohol producers including Diageo and Anheuser Busch InBev have said they recognize the importance of industry self-regulation to address alcohol abuse and promote curbs on drunk drinking and illegal underage drinking.

But the brewer SABMiller has warned that policy measures like minimum pricing and high excise taxes on alcohol could cause more public health harm than good by leading more people to drink homemade or illegally produced alcohol.

Lee Cusenbary