THE CHOICE IS YOURS

foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] to drink or not to drink that is the big question Young America wants to know is drinking really a necessary part of our lives surely one doesn't have to drink to be popular to be one of the group there's never been any liquor in our home but I sometimes wonder how many people are there who do not use alcoholic beverages my buddies and I feel that the fight to stay away from liquor is almost as difficult as the fight I've just been in you turn you're bombarded with liquor ads on TV the radio and most often in magazines the beverages are presented so attractively the settings are so elegant and the women are so glamorous and everyone seems to be having such a good time that it's hard not to believe what you read and see but how it seems to be and what really is are two very different things the use of alcohol has probably caused more misery than any other product available to the Youth of the world to say nothing of the adult population yes youth wants to know all there is to know about alcohol then we can answer the question for ourselves to drink or not to drink now really can a few beers actually hurt anybody we have heard some of the many questions about drinking that are bothering a great many of us today a great proportion of the population of our people both young and adult are concerned about drinking about alcohol what is it how does it act in our bodies why does it cause the drinker so much trouble Dr Hayes my associate and I have prepared visual material to help answer these questions and others after a few demonstrations we'll hear from our guest Dr Andrew Ivey who knows as much about the alcohol problem in this country as anyone first we ought to answer some of these questions all right the drinking consuming of alcoholic beverages is a vast problem all over the world well let's begin with a few of the facts here you see a bottle of beer one of whiskey and another of wine now these are called alcoholic beverages because they contain alcohol c2h5oh the liquid in this beaker now the more you drink the more you partake of any of these beverages the more alcohol you take into your body and the more pronounced the effect will be here smell it phew so that's what pure alcohol smells like the stuff people drink white actually burns my nose it burns in more ways than one now watch I'll set this match to it see it burns quite readily in fact alcohol is used in racing cars in rocket ships and in Torpedoes I know about cars and Rockets it's hard to believe people can drink alcohol and not burn their insides ah but you can burn your insides as you've aptly put it Dr Hayes let me show you what happens when you take an alcoholic drink I'd like you to watch this animated film very carefully here we see Bill Smith taking an alcoholic drink the alcohol travels down the esophagus to the stomach and the small intestines it is absorbed directly without digestion through the walls of the stomach capillaries in the stomach absorb the alcohol and carry it to the portal vein which carries the alcohol to the liver some of the alcohol is passed into the small intestine and here capillaries absorb the alcohol and via the portal vein it is carried to the liver do you follow me those capillaries in that portal vein look like canals or roads sort of like a transportation system that's exactly it our blood circulation is the transportation system of our bodies the average adult has six quarts of blood and this blood is pumped by the heart at the rate of 5 to 12 gallons a minute when a person is working and remember this the time required for a single drop of blood to travel from the heart to the head or to the feet and back again to the heart is about 20 seconds now since alcohol is absorbed rapidly it is present in the bloodstream within a minute or two after swallowing in the liver the alcohol is burned or oxidized but not all the alcohol is burned at once so that portion not acted upon immediately by the liver passes through the veins to the heart the greater amount of alcohol that reaches the liver at one time the greater amount of alcohol that reaches the heart so if Bill Smith takes several drinks in a short time a good percentage of the ethyl alcohol in the drinks will be transported in the bloodstream and so to the heart this alcohol is pumped by the heart to all parts of the body through the arteries the liver is the one organ in the body where the oxidation of alcohol takes place small amounts of alcohol Escape through the lungs and kidneys but the greater portion still in the bloodstream remains unchanged until acted upon by the liver then that part of the alcohol that isn't burned up oxidized just keeps traveling around the body and back to the liver until it is burned up correct the more you drink the more alcohol there is in the bloodstream the average adult can burn about one third of an ounce of alcohol per hour and that's less than a tablespoon so the more Bill Smith drinks the more alcohol will pass through his body this is very important as long as there is alcohol in the bloodstream some of it will reach the brain and that's what makes people act oddly stagger and talk fuzzy yes in the brain the alcohol acts as an anesthetic the Judgment can be dulled and a false feeling of relaxation occurs when there's less than one ounce of alcohol in the entire bloodstream so as Bill Smith continues to drink the concentration of alcohol in his brain increases and Those portions of the brain which control the vocal cords vision and muscular reaction are affected a bill doesn't Heed These danger signs and as he continues to drink he becomes so befuddled he doesn't seem to care what happens when the concentration of alcohol in his bloodstream reaches four tenths of one percent he loses consciousness you'd think that Mr Smith would know what would happen if he drank too much he probably thought that when he took that first drink it would be the only one but alcohol as I've pointed out causes one to throw caution to the winds and remember even when Bill regains Consciousness and manages to stumble home it will be eight hours or more before he's partially sober and he'll undoubtedly have a hangover when he awakens in the morning that is he'll have a pounding headache a desire for great quantities of water a bad taste in his mouth be nauseous and will want to be left alone until his nerves quiet down so the wife and children will suffer since his temper will be short he'll also be burdened with a deep sense of guilt and when he gets to the office the boss loses as well since bill is incapable of working effectively remember also that alcohol is expensive and the amount of dollars bills spent on his spree might well be a large portion of his weekly paycheck and that suppose that a lot of people spend much more than build it to buy something that just makes them feel badly in the long run yes the cost of drinking is high in more ways than one there are about 78 million occasional drinkers in the United States today and about 19 and a half million regular drinkers that is 25 of the 78 million adult drinkers of alcoholic beverages are dependent on alcohol and need treatment listen to Dr Andrew C Ivy who for many years was president of the professional schools at the University of Illinois according to the New York Medical Society there are nine million alcoholics in our country who have greatly harmed themselves economically socially spiritually and bodily by drinking alcoholic beverages this is 11 of all adult drinkers with so many millions who do drink there can't be many who don't oh but there are over the age of 15 years there are at least 38 million total abstainers or persons who don't drink and their number is growing is the facts about alcohol become more widely known you can drink when you're an adult if you want to but before you decide think carefully if it's worth the great price you may have to pay here's another piece of starting information the national Safety Council has published the appalling fact that from Pearl Harbor to Vijay day there were three-fourths as many persons killed and injured by traffic accidents due to drinking alcoholic beverages as were killed wounded and missing in our Armed Forces back in 1949 there were approximately twice as many people killed and injured by traffic accidents due to drinking as were killed and wounded annually on the average in World War II it just doesn't make sense perhaps the silly question but is it just as dangerous to drink beer or wine as it is whiskey isn't whiskey a whole lot stronger and if so more dangerous drink for drink they each contain about the same amount of alcohol I'll show you what I mean the active agent alcohol in beer whiskey wine and related beverages is identical the common name for this beverage alcohol is grain alcohol the chemist calls it ethyl alcohol now let's observe three different average sized alcoholic drinks this is a glass containing 12 ounces or one bottle of four and a half percent beer now the test tube holds the amount of ethyl alcohol contained in the single glass of beer it is 0.54 ounces next we have a three ounce glass of port wine which is 20 alcohol by volume this test tube contains the amount of ethyl alcohol found in this three ounce glass of wine it is .60 ounces now we have a whiskey high ball an eight ounce glass containing a mixture of soda water and one ounce of bounded whiskey which means it is 100 proof whiskey in this one ounce of whiskey there is one half ounce of ethyl alcohol now let's look at the three test tubes containing the amount of ethyl alcohol in each drink we quickly see that the amounts are almost the same except there's a little more alcohol in the glass of beer and the glass of wine then in the high ball made with one ounce of bounded whiskey now in answer to some of your individual questions before our demonstrations the average expense of each family using alcoholic beverages amounts to a bit more than six hundred dollars per year some families spend a good deal more than others people who frequent expensive bars can easily spend their thousand dollars or more a year and don't forget this it's been estimated that alcoholism costs the nation's industry more than two billion dollars a year primarily due to absenteeism and careless workmanship more than two billion dollars why that's more than two thousand million dollars isn't it yes more than two thousand million dollars a year here's another starting figure J Edgar Hoover director of the FBI says that the annual cost of all crime in the United States is over 15 billion dollars and the smallest estimate of the cost of crime attributed to drinking is two billion 764 million dollars well now we'd like to call back Dr Ivy to sum up our discussion in this forum on alcohol Dr ivy every young person should know one that at present no human being can be regarded as immune to dependency on an addiction to alcohol we cannot predetermine who is susceptible and who is resistance to becoming an alcoholic alcoholic addicts come from the educated and the ignorant the rich and the poor the clergy and church members as well as from among criminals two young people should know that one out of nine social drinkers reaches the stage where he is repeatedly in trouble because of alcohol that is one of the Grave risks the social Drinker takes furthermore one out of four social drinkers becomes dependent on the drug alcohol that is they do not feel normal without alcohol in their blood three young people should know that the really dangerous driver is the one who has had only two or three drinks and still thinks he is in the possession of his faculties but whose driving judgment and skill have been impaired remember one half of the persons killed in traffic accidents are drunk for young people should know that the consumption of alcoholic beverages increases promiscuity disease divorce Vice crime poverty and mortality from many diseases moreover they should know why alcohol consumption does these things that is it does these things primarily because of its effect on the brain five young people should know that the only cure for alcoholism and alcoholic addiction is total abstinence regarding abstinence there is only one question to ask what is the only word known true and scientific way never to become a drunken driver or a victim of acute and chronic alcoholism here we have an absolute and unchallengeable answer young people should know and can easily understand that abstinence is the only known easy and scientific way the only way that works for everyone to prevent acute and chronic alcoholism and abstinence is at present the only known way to cure alcohol addiction I thank God that there are millions of fine young men and women like these who know how to think and act intelligently we can be sure of our country's future when it rests in their hands remember the choice is yours to drink or not to drink [Music]