Does Reducing Alcohol Use Reduce Harm?

Since total abstinence from alcohol use often is not achieved, countries have recommended specific drinking levels to diminish the related harms. To test whether adhering to the Canadian “low-risk drinking guideline” (LRDG) would have beneficial consequences, researchers evaluated British Columbia databases in 2014 for per capita alcohol consumption, hospitalizations for alcohol-related illnesses such as cirrhosis and certain cancers, and death from these causes.

The LRDG proposed no more than 10 standard drinks weekly for women and 15 for men. Lifetime abstainers from alcohol comprised 9% of the population; 14% had stopped drinking at least 1 year previously, 65% drank within the LRDG, and 12% drank more than the LRDG.

In analyses that exclu…