Alcohol: cancer, accidents and suicides, 14,000 deaths per year: eIn Spain there are 1.9 million of these high-risk drinkers, mainly men. He alcohol also causes dead due to external causes such as accidents or suicides.
He alcoholism It is a chronic disease for which a person feels the desire to take alcoholic beverages and you cannot control that desire. A person with this disease also needs to drink larger amounts to achieve the same effect and has withdrawal symptoms after stopping alcohol consumption.
He alcoholism It affects physical and mental health and causes problems with family, friends and work. The regular consumption of alcohol increases the risk of several types of cancer. Also called dependence alcohol. It’s important to remember all that alcoholic It is usually accompanied by high consumption of tobacco, coffee and major nutritional disorders, which increases its pathology.
Alcohol kills almost 14,000 people in Spain every year, mainly due to cancer or digestive diseases, but also from external causes such as accidents or the suicides. Those affected are usually heavy consumers. In Spain there are 1.9 million of these high-risk drinkers, mainly men.
Deaths caused by alcohol are is more common in coastal communities that in that of the interior, according to the «Monograph on alcohol 2024. Consumption and consequences» from the Spanish Observatory for Drugs and Addictions and the Government Delegation for the National Drug Plan, which includes an update of the mortality data until 2021 because the last ones were from 2017.
This x-ray considers maximum 18 specific causes of death that can be partially attributed to this substance, in addition to the substances that can be directly attributed to it. The result is that this also occurred in our country in the first two decades of the 21st century 307,407 of these deaths13,887 of them in 2021.
80% of drinkers are men
The average annual death rate for alcohol was placed that year 32.9 per 100,000 inhabitants; This substance was responsible for 3.3% of all deaths in 2021 (4.5% of those among men and 1.6% of those among women), showing that its consumption is still a significant burden of disease and mortality.
How does alcohol kill? Specially for cancer (5,805 in 2021), Digestive diseases (5.303) and external causes (2.605), an order that was maintained for the first 21 years of the millennium. While in the first decade annual deaths from alcohol were around 16,000, in the second decade they have remained stable between 13,400 and 13,900.
They mainly concentrate on group between 55 and 84 yearswhich represented 66.9% in 2021, although the external causes Alcohol-related deaths are becoming more common younger people (15-34 and 35-44 years). The differences by gender are remarkable: 78.3% were male.
A significant portion of drinkers are younger than 45 years old
The highest rates across all time periods analyzed in the report were among excessive drinkers (those who have consumed daily over the past year). more than 60 grams of pure alcohol for men and 40 grams for women).
However, between 2001 and 2021, the mortality rate in this group fell by 38.5% in men and 35% in women, as did that in men. former regular drinkers (people who have not consumed in the past year, but have consumed at least twelve times in any year of their lives), in which case the the decrease was 55.3% in men and 62.3% in women.
But increased in light and moderate drinkers (those who drank alcohol in the past year, but less than 60 for men and 40 for women). Specifically, 80% among them and 2.5% among women. Alcohol-attributable mortality among heavy drinkers was concentrated in the 65-74 age group and among light moderate drinkers between 45 and 74 years, although there was also a significant proportion of the population under 45 years of age.
Asturias, alcohol causes great harm
In general, coastal communities exceed the national average and domestic countries are lagging behind, the report points out. That was the one with the highest percentage in the period 2010-2021 Asturias (42.1/100,000 inhabitants), followed by Galicia (40), and Ceuta and Melilla (38.8). On the contrary, the lowest was Madrid (26.5)next to Extremadura (31) and Navarre (31.3).
In the same period, those that contributed most to the risk of overall mortality were Asturias (4.2%), Galicia (3.9%) and Andalusia (3.8%), and those that contributed least were Madrid (2, 6%), Navarre and Extremadura (both with 3.1%).
But compared to the previous decade the average annual percentage decreased overallmore in Madrid (-35.8%), Andalusia (-30%) and the Basque Country (-29.1%), and slightly less in the Valencian Community (-21.2%) and Castilla y León (-17%) .
The hidden face of alcohol
In a context of a widespread consumption – two thirds of the population aged 15 to 64 have drunk in the past month and 9% do so every day – the risk data, presented by 6% of citizens, is particularly worrying. That’s 1.9 million people.
So alcohol was responsible 36.2% of treatment admissions for substance abuse in the drug and addiction care network in our country, with a total of 25,140 admissions, of which almost 3 in 4 were men.
The alcohol was present in 41.4% of hospital emergencies related to substance use, which was particularly influential under 25 years oldalthough this percentage reached 55% in the episodes where this was the only one detected.
With differences by gender: although it was by far the most common drug in substance-related emergencies in men (60.7%), in women it was the second drug (46.5%), after sedative-hypnotics (49.7%).