[Peace-discuss] Boozers in the Greatest Nation

[Szoke, Ron]

The number of Americans drinking themselves to death has more than doubled

By NICOLE LYN PESCE
WSJ   Jan 17, 2020 

Here’s another reason to try a Dry January.

The number of Americans drinking themselves to death has more than doubled over the last two decades, according to a sobering new report.
   Researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism analyzed the death certificates of Americans ages 16 and up between 1999 and 2017. And while 35,914 deaths were alcohol-related in 1999, that number doubled to reach 72,558 in 2017. The death rate spiked 50.9% from 16.9 to 25.5 per 100,000.
   In other words, alcohol was a factor in nearly 1 million deaths during that time period, with about half of these deaths resulting from liver disease, or a fatal overdose from alcohol or alcohol mixed with other drugs. In 2017 alone, 2.6% of roughly 2.8 million deaths in the United States involved alcohol.
   What’s more, the CDC warned in a separate report on Thursday that binge drinkers (defined as four drinks during one occasion for women, and five drinks for men) are consuming more alcohol than they were before. The number of drinks they’ve knocked back spiked from 472 on average in 2011 to 529 in 2017, or a 12% increase.
   And the number of binge drinks per adult who reported binge-drinking increased “significantly” in nine states, the report added, including Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, and Virginia. But it decreased significantly in Massachusetts and West Virginia, and did not change significantly in the other 30 states or D.C.
   Some groups appear to be more vulnerable than others, according to the morbidity study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research last week. While rates of alcohol-related deaths were highest among men in general, the largest annual increase in deaths was seen among non-Hispanic white women. Indeed, a recent Columbia University study found that the greatest increases in binge drinking were reported among women ages 30 to 44 without children, although binge drinking increased among men and women overall, as well.
   The death rate related to alcohol was also higher among people ages 55 and 64 in the new report, which is supported by a recent report that found that binge drinking among Americans over 50 jumped 19% between 2005 and 2014. And by ethnicity, non-Hispanic American Indians and Alaska natives had the highest alcohol-related death rates.
   These startling figures probably fall short of the actual number, the researchers noted, since death certificates often fail to indicate alcohol’s role in mortality. (Only one in six drunk driving deaths are reported as alcohol-related, according to one study.)

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