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Comment by polar8 | Hacker News Reader

“Perfectly fine” is a bit of a stretch. No amount of alcohol is good for health. WHO now say even small amounts increase risk of cancer and liver disease.

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Having to share a world with people who take way to seriously the long tail of things that will kill you so little you need massive sample sizes and meta studies to quantify the effect is a hell of a lot worse for my health than ~2 light beers per week and a steak a month.

I'd argue that small amounts of alcohol facilitate relaxation and socialization, which probably saves a lot more lives from preventing homicide and suicide than it costs in cancer and liver disease.

After socialization comes drunk driving which alone kills a quarter million people annually.

It's deeply fascinating to many europeans living in cities that one would need to drive to go to a bar.

My closest bar is 100 meters away. If I'm willing to walk 20 minutes, the radius can probably hit around 100 different ones.

I’m European and live in a city. There are still plenty of drunk driving fatalities here.

That's why I specified a small amount, there's a strong inverted U curve for alcohol for sure.

Here the legal limit is approximately 2 440ml cans or a draft of beer.

If you are drinking more than that across an evening I would argue it's a bit more than socialising. Maybe where you are from people are heavy drinkers and are not responsible enough to not slow down a fee hours before you know you will be driving but I feel like the quarter a million annually is quite overrepresented by heavy drinkers.

This is nonsense. Drinking in moderation is beneficial or at worst harmless. Every two years the "science" changes. Anyone that pays too much attention to what it says is a fool.

Can you provide more details on the health benefits of ethanol?

It does an okay job as a hand sanitizer.

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