The New Alcohol Epidemic Kills More Than Two and a Half Times as Many People as The Opioid Epidemic

The percent of people who’d consumed alcohol in the previous 12 months rose by 11.2 percent, especially among women, minorities, adults over the age of 65, and people with lower education levels and low incomes. That in and of itself isn’t worrisome, but the prevalence of high-risk drinking—those four or five drinks a day, at least once a week—also rose by nearly 30 percent in that time, but primarily among the same groups. Problem drinking increased from 9.7 percent to 12.6 percent of the population, representing a rise from 20.2 million to 29.6 million Americans.