Everything is risky, riding a horse is risky, going sailing is risky, doing a stressful job is risky. Running marathons often causes health problems. Being sedentary causes health problems.
Being lonely is terrible for your health. Having a beer with your friends could be as important as another evening in the gym.
Certainly if someone gets to a point where they're dependent on alcohol, or it's negatively impacting their life, that's a problem. But that's not what we're talking about here.
if that's not a lot, would you mind sending me 2% of your pay check? I will have to find something to compensate, but first I'd be curious what the relatively huge advantage of loosing 2 years to alcohol is in your mind, for sake of the argument.
And regardless, you've chosen to focus on one of the larger estimates. Six months at the 100-200g level is around 0.7% of life. You're certainly free to think I'm short-sighted by valuing a little drinking more than 0.7% of my life expectancy, but I'm also free to ignore you; it's my life, and I get to decide what makes me happy.
Yet all the health problems caused by the very air we breath in cities, well that is fine.
>> In the UK, 8.39% of deaths were due to pollution
It always seems pretty high.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-has-one-of-the-worst-p...
However, I cannot remember ever seeing a front page story on the topic when walking past the newspapers in the supermarket. (Not claiming there are zero front page headlines, but “Statins Do A Thing” and “Princesses Diana XYZ” swamp any about pollution).
But our reasoning isn't sound.
- Participation in other risky activities doesn't justify drinking
- Alternative to drinking is not loneliness
We must be pragmatic about the society we live in, but societies can change and so can we.
Of course, I do have that bottle of wine to finish at home . . .