SummaryIt has often been suggested that a higher rate of alcohol consumption will eventually lead to a higher rate of death from traumata and diseases typically observed in alcoholics and other excessive drinkers. In the Netherlands alcohol consumption has much increased in recent years. However, an examination of mortality by cause and age over a 25–year period has indicated that it is very difficult indeed to render the presumed effects of much increased alcohol consumption on public health statistically visible. Some of these effects may well have been obscured by more significant developments in mortality such as the higher rates of death from cardiovascular diseases and from neoplasm of the lung. Other effects may not have happened at all. In the case of liver cirrhosis mortality ‐ which doubled while alcohol consumption quadrupled during the period of study ‐ it was noted that the rate of death from all liver diseases (including liver cirrhosis) has been declining. In the case of several other alcohol‐related (?) causes of death it was found that mortality rates were not responsive to recent trends in alcohol consumption in the Neth