That is what I would call this document from the World Health Organization instead of the rather dull Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2011. I had no idea that over 50% of Andorran women did not drink. Why did Canadian drinking peak around 1982 while it happened 20 years later in the UK? It's all in the graphs. Up there is a bit of the report from Afghanistan. Apparently, they had a post-Taliban mini-bump in consumption. Probably the Canuck troops now that I think of it. How do Canadians fare when they are on the home front? Looks OK, I guess (pdf alert) but the topics are all grim. Morbidity. Abstinence. Apparently there is a WHO game of some sort judging from the chart "Patterns of Drinking Score." Canada gets a 2. Not sure if it is like golf or hockey, however. Hope we beat Sweden in the finals. That's always a good one.

Interesting to note that alcohol is considered the third greatest source of health problems behind childhood underweight and unsafe sex. It's not my place or within most of your skill sets to question what that means in terms of public health in most corners of the Earth but this article about the implications of the report as a policy tool in East Africa is interesting even with the unfortunate conclusion: "[c]ontrary to popular belief, a majority of Kenyans do not drink, but of those who do, most are heavy drinkers with men beating women by more than two times." I honestly had to read that three times before I clued in that it was not about violence. I did not know Ugandans drink 94% of their alcohol in traditional brews, a drink we've reviewed before but without realizing its scale. Craft brewers need to give a hard look at the Seychelles with consumption being in the form of beer 85% of the time. Avoid Cape Verde where it's 80% wine.

Although the title says 2011, the stats end at 2005 as far as I can tell. But is great stuff even if all in a great big blob of a pdf. How else would you know that two-thirds of Belizians don't drink but of the third that do, two-thirds go down as beer. Happy Belikin.