Hacker News Reader

Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

The article is down right now, but looking at the comments, the framing of this issue is weird. 10% pay 80% because 10% BUY 80%.

That might be hard to believe.

But I remember looking at data on liquor consumption and curious about what the 80/20 rule was on it, and I was horrified to find that the something like over 50% (correction, 90%) of all liquor is consumed by people who drink and AVERAGE of 750ml for themselves per week.

Alcohol sales primarily go to alcoholics. It's a truth we don't want to see.

EDIT: when I say "liquor" I mean vodka, whiskey, etc - stuff that is at least 80 proof/40% ABV. Not wine.

View on HN

I was shocked to realize the alcohol industry caters nearly entirely to addicts. Something like 75% of alcohol is sold to raging alcoholics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...

Consumption (average number of drinks per capita consumed in the past week, by decile, among adults aged 18 and over) deciles:

   bottom 3: 0 drinks/week
   4th:  0.02 drinks/week
   5th:  0.14 drinks/week
   6th:  0.63 drinks/week
   7th:  2.17 drinks/week
   8th:  6.25 drinks/week
   9th: 15.28 drinks/week
  10th: 73.85 drinks/week

YES! This is similar to the data I was looking at. Thank you for sharing the numbers.

> Alcohol sales primarily go to alcoholics. It's a truth we don't want to see.

I've always led with that assumption and I'm fine with it. I know how we got here and I think understanding that is important.

750ml a week is less than a glass of wine each day which is supposedly the amount that's good for heart health.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease...

The parent comment, however, was referring to liquor. Which, I assume, to be whiskey, vodka, tequila, etc.

That's like one bottle of wine? I really don't think that's enough to qualify someone as an alcoholic? I drink once or twice per week and probably go through more than that.

It's one bottle of wine, but I'm assuming they're referring to liquor. There's about 17 drinks (it's like 44 ml to a shot in the US) in a bottle of liquor.

That said 17 drinks in a week is 2 a weekday plus 3 a weekend, which doesn't seem that crazy.

Until you realize that that means -every week- that's your plan. When's the last time you drank 2+ drinks a day every day for a year?

~2 drinks a day, every day, isn't great for you, but it isn't sufficient on its own to meet the criteria of alcoholism (Alcohol Use Disorder).[1]

> Healthcare professionals use criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), to assess whether a person has AUD and to determine the severity if the disorder is present. Severity is based on the number of criteria a person meets based on their symptoms—mild (2–3 criteria), moderate (4–5 criteria), or severe (6 or more criteria).

A lot of the criteria are like, do you physically depend on alcohol? Or alcohol has harmed your quality of life?

[1]: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...

As an alcoholic, if you depend on that one drink every day and CAN'T go without it, you are an alcoholic.

Yeah -- it's the dependency that's the diagnostic criteria, not the daily drink.

Alcoholics drink a lot more than 750mL of wine a week.

Wine is only ~12-16% alcohol. I think OP is either referring to ~40% liquor or 100% ethanol (as a unified way to compare across consumption of different types of alcoholic beverages).

Oh right, brain fart.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com