It\u2019s also linked to a wide range of illnesses including cardiovascular disease and depression, all of which are adding pressure to stretched health systems.<\/p>\n
The WHO said governments should target alcohol consumption to protect people from its ill effects. Increasing the cost of booze through taxes is one of the most effective measures governments can take, the WHO said. Yet, some EU countries have minimal or no taxes on certain types of alcohol.<\/p>\n
The fact that more than half of EU countries don\u2019t tax wine at all is \u201cunusual\u201d by international standards, WHO economist Anne-Marie Perucic said. She pointed out that the more affordable alcohol is, the more people consume.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcluding a product is not common. It\u2019s always for political reasons, socio-economic reasons [like] trying to protect the local industry. Clearly, it doesn\u2019t make sense from a health perspective,\u201d Perucic told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
Those 14 countries span the EU\u2019s northern and central regions, such as Germany, Austria and Bulgaria.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore affordable alcohol drives violence, injuries and disease,\u201d said Etienne Krug, director of the WHO\u2019s department of health determinants, promotion and prevention. \u201cWhile industry profits, the public often carries the health consequences and society the economic costs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s also linked to a wide range of illnesses including cardiovascular disease and depression, all of which are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[11313,258,292,103,397,396,61,60,102,12065,16017,2361,2846,5066,17328],"class_list":{"0":"post-242911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-alcohol","9":"tag-cancer","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-health-care","13":"tag-healthcare","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-italy","17":"tag-non-communicable-diseases","18":"tag-prevention","19":"tag-public-health","20":"tag-spain","21":"tag-tax","22":"tag-wine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}