This story about world drunkenness is interesting. Immigrant countries don’t tell us a whole lot with a survey like this, but the old world offers some useful insights. Those screaming about scientific racism love talking about this sort of stuff, never understanding that it undermines their charges, making them look foolish. You can’t explain a map like this with culture alone. It gets worse when those ethnic patters hold for people in North America. From the article:

Britons over the age of 15 on average drink 11.6 litres of pure alcohol a year, according to the “Global status report on alcohol and health 2014”.

The report provides country profiles for alcohol consumption in the 194 WHO member states, looking at the resulting impact on public health and policy responses.

And it reveals that the harmful use of alcohol causes 3.3 million deaths a year worldwide.

Europe is the region with the highest consumption of alcohol per person, making up the entire top 10.

Belarus takes the top spot, with people on average drinking 17.5 litres of pure alcohol a year, followed by the Republic of Moldova where the figure is 16.8 litres.

Australia and Canada also have high levels of alcohol consumption, with people on average drinking 12.2 and 10.2 litres a year respectively.

In the United States the figure is marginally lower at 9.2 litres.

But in northern Africa and the Middle East, the average figure is less than 2.5 litres of alcohol per person, with many countries having figures below one litre.

When analyzing the stand-off with Russia over Ukraine, it may be useful to remember this map. There are many difference between east and West and they don’t stop at the neck line or the bar bill. Russia is not Western, but it is not Asian either. It is the great transition and that shapes the Russian worldview. They look at Ukraine in a very different way that the sorts of people infesting the State Department.