{"id":43387,"date":"2018-05-31T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T05:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43387"},"modified":"2018-05-11T09:40:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T13:40:52","slug":"qotd-difficulties-in-using-self-reported-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/31\/qotd-difficulties-in-using-self-reported-data\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Difficulties in using self-reported data"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Nick Cohen, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2018\/may\/05\/enough-liberal-hand-wringing-raising-alcohol-prices-is-not-class-war\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">over in the <em>Guardian<\/em><\/a>, is busy telling us all that we must drink less and that Scotland raising the minimum price of alcohol (hitting poor people\u2019s cheap cider and bargain booze, but not directly affecting craft lagers, <em>appellation d\u2019origine contr\u00f4l\u00e9e<\/em> wines and artisan gin) is a Good Thing because the industry makes its profits by exploiting addicts who are drinking themselves to death <em>en masse<\/em>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>It is a truth universally unacknowledged that, like drugs cartels, the drink industry makes most of its money from addicts. It thrives on hooked customers, who put boosting the brewers\u2019 profits before their and their families\u2019 health and happiness. Sixty per cent of alcohol sales \u2013 worth \u00a327bn a year in England \u2013 are to \u201cincreasing risk\u201d drinkers taking more than 21 units of alcohol a week, in the case of men (about 10 pints or two bottles of wine), and \u201charmful\u201d drinkers taking more than 50\u2026 Twenty one units (14 for women) does not sound much in my world of journalism, but it is a sign of people who cannot go a day without a shot of their drug, which is as good a definition of an addiction as any.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, there\u2019s a question there about who decided what that \u201crisk\u201d was and how large it was. Cohen gets into the Salvation Army-style temperance-league apocalyptic warnings about the horrors of heavy drinking and warns that by the time you\u2019re knocking back fifty units a week (for men, thirty-five for women) you\u2019re undergoing \u201cfull degeneration\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But is that based on any firm evidence? One interesting study, reassuring to the toper, can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/health.spectator.co.uk\/the-great-alcohol-cover-up-how-public-health-bodies-hid-the-truth-about-drinking\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, which among other things makes the gentle point that since we either under-report what we consume, or we pour away half of the booze we buy undrunk, planning policy on what we <strong>admit<\/strong> to consuming may not be accurate.<\/p>\n<p>Jason Lynch, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.continentaltelegraph.com\/civil-liberty\/how-much-is-too-much\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;How Much Is &#8216;Too Much&#8217;?&#8221;, <em>Continental Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, 2018-05-08.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Cohen, over in the Guardian, is busy telling us all that we must drink less and that Scotland raising the minimum price of alcohol (hitting poor people\u2019s cheap cider and bargain booze, but not directly affecting craft lagers, appellation d\u2019origine contr\u00f4l\u00e9e wines and artisan gin) is a Good Thing because the industry makes its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,66,41,131],"tags":[104,322,244],"class_list":["post-43387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-health-science","category-quotations","category-wine","tag-booze","tag-nannystate","tag-publichealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bhN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43388,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43387\/revisions\/43388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}