|
Abstract
|
Policies aimed at reducing overall levels of alcohol consumption, in combination with more specific interventions addressing alcohol‐related traffic harm, may lead to reductions in traffic‐related injuries and deaths. Lithuania has achieved remarkable progress in this area in recent years, but more efforts to reduce the alcohol‐attributable burden for other external causes of death are still needed.
Rehm et al. 1 report new evidence from Lithuania concerning close associations between alcohol control policy measures and the reduction of traffic‐related injuries and deaths. The key message of this study is that combining general policy aimed at reducing the overall level of alcohol consumption with more specific policies addressing alcohol‐related traffic harm may lead to overall reductions in traffic‐related injuries and deaths.
The Lithuanian context provides a unique setting to study the potential of broad and specific alcohol control policies 2. First, Lithuania belongs to the group of post‐Soviet countries with the highest levels of alcohol consumption and alcohol‐attributable mortality in the world 3. Prior research indicates that excessive alcohol consumption in these countries has been closely related to excess violent deaths 4. Despite substantial progress since 2005, the latest available World Health Organization (WHO) estimates for 2015 suggest that Lithuanian males continue to have the highest levels among any European Union member state of mortality due to external causes of death 5. This unfavorable situation in the international context has been driven by persisting and exceptionally high male suicide rates. Indeed, the Lithuanian male suicide rate is the highest in the entire WHO European region. In the mid‐2000s, Lithuania held the same regional leadership for male traffic accidents. However, the situation radically improved during the second half of the 2000s thanks to a remarkable decline in traffic‐related mortality of more than 50% 6. The continuation of this progress in the 2010s, with further significant reductions in the share of deaths accounted for by alcohol‐related traffic accidents, is a success story. Meanwhile, for many other external causes of death, such as suicides, positive changes have been much slower and less systematic ...
Language: en |