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Comment by allturtles | Hacker News Reader

> any amount of alcohol consumption causes some amount of harm

There is no guarantee that you will suffer harm from a single drink. What it really means is that any amount of alcohol consumption carries some (possibly minute) risk of harm. This is not, IMO, equivalent to "unsafe", which generally means something well outside the bounds of normal risks that most people already take on in their everyday lives.

If we accepted that "some risk of harm" = unsafe, we would have to describe using the stairs as unsafe, taking a shower as unsafe, putting up Christmas lights as unsafe, etc.

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And medically those are unsafe. The crucial part, though, is that that's not at all to say you shouldn't do them. You are simply using a different understanding of the word safe than they are. This is a medical brief aimed at experts who should have no trouble understanding what claims are and are not being made.

This is not a lifestyle or dietary recommendation. This is not a cost benefit analysis. This is a medical brief that states that no amount of consumption is safe. The takeaway categorically should not be that we should all reduce our intake to zero, which seems to be how folks are interpreting this.

For what it's worth, I say all this as a regular drinker who has no intention of ceasing drinking.

I would argue that if those things are unsafe, the term unsafe has no useful meaning, i.e. life is unsafe.

It's a policy brief, not a medical brief, it is pro-abstinence and recommends a variety of alcohol control policies, short of actual prohibition:

"- Call for strict regulation of alcohol products

- Advocate for minimum pricing of alcohol products

- Build capacity internally and among peers to promote cessation of alcohol use and abstinence from alcohol

...

- Prioritise alcohol control in national agendas for health and support policy coherence between health and other sectors"

etc.

At least death is safe. As in, dying will not increase your risk of death.

If time word “unsafe” means “carries more than zero risk” then it isn’t very useful to me to know whether a doctor considers something unsafe.

Yes, but it's useful to them. That's the point.

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