ABSTRACT
An important objective of alcohol control policy in Finland, Norway, and Sweden has been to decrease the level of alcohol consumption and alcohol-involved social and health problems. This chapter is concerned with health and social problems for which alcohol consumption increases the risk of occurrence. The association between per capita alcohol use and potential consequences can vary due to differences in risk curves for different problems, in the distribution of other causes for different alcohol-involved consequences in the population, and to differences in the criteria used to record illness and/or death. Death from liver cirrhosis is commonly used as the primary measure of the rate of severe alcohol-involved health problems. Liver cirrhosis mortality has been shown to vary with changes in per capita alcohol consumption, but it comprises only a part of all alcohol-involved problems. The risk curve for liver cirrhosis is exponential, that is, the risk of liver cirrhosis increases rapidly as consumption of alcohol increases.
