Alcohol Is Poison That Shortens Drinker's Life by Three Years, 1915

“Nine Million Lives Lost in a Year…Mr. Boyce’s Talks,” from the Albemarle Observer, Edenton, N.C., Jan. 8, 1915

An average of over nine million lives lost! That is the estimated toll of alcoholic poison in the United States and colonies in a single year. More than have been killed in any war; more than will be killed in the present war, great as its losses are.

We shudder when we read of thousands of men killed in battle. Yet alcoholic poison has been taking more lives every day, under the American flag, than have been lost on Europe’s battlefields. An average of over nine million in one year! It is a staggering statement and one which we ourselves refused to believe at first. But its truth has been forced upon us.

Alcoholic poison shortens the average life of the American people three years. Any schoolboy can work out the rest of it. Taking the 100,000,000 population of the United States and its colonies multiply that by three, the number of years cut from the average life of the American people by alcoholic poison. That gives 300,000,000 life-years annually. The average length of human life in the United States is 33 years. Divide the 300,000,000 by 33 and you have the average loss of possible life in one year. In the United States the average value of a human life is given by $5,000. Multiply the 9,000,000 by $5,000 and you have $45,000,000,000, or more than the great European war will cost if it runs three years.

In the midst of its war, Europe is better off than ever before, for the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks have been curtailed to the lowest point. No wonder Russia was willing to enter the war, with its alcoholic traffic abolished. By cutting out the drinking of alcoholic beverages, Russia saved a loss of 13,000,000 lives a year, while in the war the great empire cannot lose more than 2,000,000 lives a year.

When a war ends, the killing of men is over. The warfare of alcoholic poison against humanity will not end until the manufacture of all alcoholic drinks is suppressed. Nation-wide prohibition for the United States has grown much nearer within the past year. That such a proposal should receive a majority vote in the national House of Representatives in 1914 was a fact unthought of as recently as five years ago. The vote taken last week is the greatest prohibition ever scored in this country. At the next session of Congress the question will be up again. It will be an issue in the next presidential campaign. Within a few years the traffic in alcoholic poison in the United States will be totally ended.