Alcohol consumption contributed to 2.6 million deaths worldwide, according to a recent report from the World Health Organization , with psychoactive drug use responsible for another .6 million.
Together, those numbers represented 4.7% of all deaths total worldwide. Those most affected were young people age 20 to 39—specifically men, who accounted for 2 million of those deaths, with most occurring in Europe and Africa.
And while there has been some reduction in alcohol-related deaths since 2010, the recently reported numbers—which represent 145 countries from 2019—show a stubborn, lethal problem, and “the overall number of deaths due to alcohol consumption remains unacceptably high,” notes the report , which was released in June. Globally, an estimated 400 million people, or 7% of the world’s population aged 15 years and older, live with alcohol use disorders, defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as “a problematic pattern of alcohol use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.” An estimated 209 million (3.
7% of the adult world population), meanwhile, live with alcohol dependence . The specific causes of death were far-reaching, based on 31 health conditions that could, based on scientific evidence, be connected to alcohol use. It was a similar case when looking at the use of psychoactive drugs—defined by WHO as substances which have the ability to change “consciousness, mood or thinking processes” a.