Americans Are Drinking Themselves to Death at Record Rates

Jim
Society & Culture
Alcohol
American Culture

Americans are drinking themselves to death at a record-breaking rate, according to a report. More than 30,700 people in the country died in 2014 from alcohol-related causes, including alcohol poisoning, the Washington Post reports, citing new federal data. Last year’s rate of 9.6 deaths per 100,000 people is an increase of 37% since 2002, according to the newspaper. More people died from alcohol in 2014 than from overdoses of prescription painkillers and heroin combined, the Post said. Those causes did not include deaths from drunk driving or homicides committed while drunk.

Discussion

Profile picture for user Bert Perry
Bert Perry
Mon, 01/01/18 6:46 pm

…would be if the data were broken out between two categories; fatalities among those who engaged in binge drinking or were alcoholics vs. those that were not. The very phrase “drinking themselves to death” gives us the picture of someone emptying that fifth of bourbon each day or so, and hence it’s really primarily appropriate to describe things in those terms. My nickel bet is that almost all fatalities are among the top 10% or so of drinkers—really the problem drinkers and alcoholics.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

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Ron Bean
Mon, 01/01/18 8:39 pm

Ten times more Americans are dying from obesity each year according to the NIH.

https://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm

The simplest and most often used measure of abdominal obesity is waist size. Guidelines generally define abdominal obesity in women as a waist size 35 inches or higher, and in men as a waist size of 40 inches or higher. BTW, that measurement is at your belly button it is not your pant size.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan