Alcohol sales and fatal alcohol poisonings:: a time-series analysis

Aims To discover whether the number of fatal alcohol peaks during festivities characterized by unrestrained drinking and relates to sales of alcoholic beverages. Design Time-series and cross-sectional. Data Fatal alcohol poisonings and retail alcohol sales in Finland in 1983-99. Findings Fatal alcohol poisonings were found to peak during weekends and in the May Day, Midsummer Day and Christmas celebrations. Regression analysis of quarterly series lead to a model showing that 1% increase in the sales of spirits increases the number of fatal alcohol poisonings by 0.4%. Conclusions At the population level, increases in the sales of spirits and periods of hard drinking seem to increase deaths from alcohol poisoning. The findings could be of use in efforts to decrease hard drinking.