How Little-Known Tax Laws Could Drive Down Our Suicide Rate

Suicide is a pressing public health issue that deserves a thoughtful policy response. But we don’t often talk about regulating one of the biggest suicide risk factors: alcohol. The use of alcohol and drugs is the most frequent risk factor for suicide after depression and mood disorders, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alcohol was a factor in approximately one-third of suicides in 2007, 62 percent of which involved people with blood alcohol levels higher than the legal driving limit of 0.08. While mental health experts talk about the role of alcohol use in suicide rates, that conversation never seems to extend to policy or regulation. Now, new evidence from a review of existing study literature indicates that it should. “There’s ample literature [on alcohol and suicide]. What’s missing is how alcohol policy affects suicide,” said study author Ziming Xuan, an assistant professor of community health sciences at Boston University’s School of Public Health. Taxation as a weapon against alcohol-related suicide Xuan decided to fill that gap by reviewing 17 studies on alcohol policies and suicide published between 1999 and 2014. He found that polices like alcohol taxation, limiting the number of stores that sell alcohol in a given area, increasing minimum drinking ages and restricting hours for alcohol sales were associated with lower suicide rates.  “If one can reduce the averag...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news