Public Health Gains and Missed Opportunities

The decrease in alcohol consumption levels in the WHO European Region has been fueled by decreases in the richest countries in the Central Western EU and Mediterranean parts of the Region (see Figure I), whereas drinking levels in the Central Eastern EU part remained stable over the past 25 years, and drinking levels in Russia and surrounding countries and in the South Eastern part of the WHO Euro [...] The European region has the highest level of alcohol consumption in the world, in part driven by high consumption in the Eastern part of the region.2 Consequently, the disease burden caused by alcohol is also high in this region, in particular in the Eastern part,2,5,6 despite the overall high life expectancy in large portions of this region.7 The high burden of alcohol has led to a plea for inter [...] In addition to country estimates, we estimated adult per capita consumption for the WHO European Region as a whole and for several clusters of countries within the region (see below for definition of clusters) based on drinking style and wealth:36 In terms of drinking style, the following traditional drinking styles can be found in the WHO European Region (37; for a wider discussion on the categor [...] Trends for total adult per capita alcohol consumption for all countries in the WHO European Region In the following, we give trends for total adult per capita alcohol consumption, i.e., for the sum of recorded, unrecorded and tourist consumption, for all countries in the WHO European Region, with clusters of several neighboring countries being on the same graph. [...] However, adult per capita alcohol consumption in the south of the WHO European Region is converging, and the countries with the historical lowest consumption have shown increasing trends (Israel, Malta), but still are markedly below other Mediterranean countries and the average for the WHO European Region as a whole.