Alcohol abusers are found in all age groups. However, the most rapid increase now is among younger people and women. Sadly, many more pre-teen-age children are becoming involved with alcohol abuse.

A Growing Threat

World Health magazine states: “On any assessment, drink-related disabilities would rate as one of the world’s largest amalgams of health problems.” This publication also observes: “In most parts of the world the incidence grows, sometimes at an explosive rate.”

In the United States, there are now an estimated 10 million alcohol-dependent people, an increase of several million in recent years. Millions of others are acquiring unwise drinking habits that could lead to alcoholism.

The threat to life and happiness by alcohol abuse is very real; it is no joke. For example, a vehicle driver who has been drinking is a major threat to life. Each year, in the United States alone, an estimated 25,000 people die in alcohol-related traffic accidents. That is about half the highway deaths. And some 500,000 are injured by drinking drivers. Most of the drivers who had been drinking were not just ‘social drinkers,’ but were problem drinkers, alcohol-dependent drinkers.

In a California study of 1,000 fatally injured drivers, 65 percent of those responsible for the accidents were under the influence of alcohol.

In addition, each year there are about 20,000 deaths from alcohol-related accidents in the country, other than highway accidents. Nearly two thirds of all the murders and almost a third of all the suicides are alcohol related, as well as half the fire deaths and drownings. Thousands die from alcohol-related illnesses.

In fact, in the United States, each year far more people are killed or injured due to alcohol abuse than were killed or injured in any year of the Vietnam War. Also, Federal Bureau of Investigation reports indicate that over 40 percent of all arrests involve alcohol-related incidents.

Drinking has become so widespread and troublesome that about one out of every five Americans polled says it is causing serious trouble in his or her family. So strongly do some feel about such difficulties that about 20 percent now favor a return to prohibition.

Alcohol abuse threatens innocent persons in another way. Dr. Fritz Henn, a psychiatry professor at the University of Iowa Medical School, says: “In our studies and in others, alcohol seems to be involved in a large number of both rapes and child molestations. It is probably the single most consistent feature in either of these offenses.”

About one out of every 10 workers in the United States has some degree of alcohol dependence. This results in a drain of about $25 billion a year to the economy from illness, absenteeism, inefficiency and accidents. “Excessive drinking is responsible for more loss to industry than all other diseases combined,” relates U.S. News & World Report.

In the Soviet Union, the press continually reminds its readers that a large share of crime, traffic accidents, divorce, job absenteeism, juvenile delinquency and drownings is to be attributed to alcohol abuse. The government has raised the price of alcoholic beverages in its attempts to stem the rising tide of alcoholism.

Alcoholism is considered France’s largest domestic problem. A judge in the city of Lille said that the most common complaint by women seeking divorce was their husband’s drinking. In Brest, a police chief stated: “I have seen so much alcoholism that it has traumatized me​—and I can’t help thinking about all the cases we miss.” Sixty percent of the country’s industrial accidents were blamed on alcohol abuse.

In a South American country, a high official called alcohol abuse his country’s “most serious social disease.” In nation after nation, the reports are similar.