Why does society accept a higher risk for alcohol than for other voluntary or involuntary risks?

Medicine for Global Health

Background:

Societies tend to accept much higher risks for voluntary behaviours, those based on individual decisions (for example, to smoke, to consume alcohol, or to ski), than for involuntary exposure such as exposure to risks in soil, drinking water or air. In high-income societies, an acceptable risk to those voluntarily engaging in a risky behaviour seems to be about one death in 1,000 on a lifetime basis. However, drinking more than 20 g pure alcohol per day over an adult lifetime exceeds a threshold of one in 100 deaths, based on a calculation from World Health Organization data of the odds in six European countries of dying from alcohol-attributable causes at diferente levels of drinking.

 

acesse: Alcohol_Risk_Opinion_Rehm_et_al._2014_BMC_Medicine.pdf