ABSTRACT
During the last decade, there has been a growing interest in the consequences of changes in per capita alcohol consumption in relation to the health of the population. So far, attention has mostly been focused on the consequences of long term abuse, such as chronic diseases. This interest has, inter alia, been stimulated by the discovery of regularities in the distribution of alcohol consumption, implying that there is a connection between the general level of consumption in the population and the prevalence of heavy alcohol use (Ledermann 1956, 1964, Bruun et al. 1975, Skog 1985a). Therefore, a relationship between per capita alcohol consumption and the prevalence of chronic alcohol-related diseases is to be expected. The empirical evidence for this relationship is still very much limited to cirrhosis of the liver, while the importance of per capita consumption in relation to other diseases has received much less attention.
