Alcohol consumption, particularly heavier drinking, is an important risk factor for many health problems and, thus, is a major contributor to the global burden of disease. In fact, alcohol is a necessary underlying cause for more than 30 conditions and a contributing factor to many more. The most common disease categories that are entirely or partly caused by alcohol consumption include infectious diseases, cancer, diabetes, neuropsychiatric diseases (including alcohol use disorders), cardiovascular disease, liver and pancreas disease, and unintentional and intentional injury. Knowledge of these disease risks has helped in the development of low-risk drinking guidelines. In addition to these disease risks that affect the drinker, alcohol consumption also can affect the health of others and cause social harm both to the drinker and to others, adding to the overall cost associated with alcohol consumption. These findings underscore the need to develop effective prevention efforts to reduce the pain and suffering, and the associated costs, resulting from excessive alcohol use.Alcohol consumption has been identified as an important risk factor for illness, disability, and mortality (Rehm et al. 2009b). In fact, in the last comparative risk assessment conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), the detrimental impact of alcohol consumption on the global burden of disease and injury was surpassed only by unsafe sex and childhood underweight status but exceeded that of many classic risk factors, such as unsafe water and sanitation, hyper-tension, high cholesterol, or tobacco use (WHO 2009). This risk assessment evaluated the net effect of all alcohol consumption—that is, it also took into account the beneficial effects that alcohol consumption (primarily moderate consumption) can have on ischemic diseases and diabetes (Baliunas et al. 2009; Corrao et al. 2000; Patra et al. 2010; Rehm et al. 2004). Although these statistics reflect the consequences of all alcohol consumption, it is clear that most of the burden associated with alcohol use stems from regular heavier drinking, defined, for instance, as drinking more than 40 grams of pure alcohol per day for men and 20 grams of pure alcohol per day for womem (Patra et al. 2009; Rehm et al. 2004). In addition to the average volume of alcohol consumption, patterns of drinking—especially irregular heavy-drinking occasions, or binge drinking (defined as drinking at least 60 grams of pure alcohol or five standard drinks in one sitting)—markedly contribute to the associated burden of disease and injury (Gmel et al. 2010; Rehm et al. 2004).