An annual death toll from America's alcohol habit is shown. One in eight deaths in Americans between the ages of 20 to 64 are caused by excess drinking, according to a study. One in five deaths of adults below the age of 50 may be caused by alcohol.
It has been known for a while that drinking alcohol can be fatal. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wanted to better understand how much alcohol can contribute to deaths that aren't caused by it. They decided to look at mortality data as well as data on how often Americans drink. They used this data to calculate estimates of how much alcohol contributes to various causes of death, such as a person dying from alcoholism.
The updated numbers were released by the CDC. Their previous estimate of 95,000 alcohol-related deaths a year is now thought to be incorrect. Many of these deaths are happening among working-age Americans according to new findings.
There were an average of 694,660 deaths over the course of three years. The researchers found that about a third of the deaths were due to excessive alcohol use. About 20% of deaths in the US between the ages of 20 to 49 were caused by excessive alcohol use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The harms of alcohol may still be overstated. The study may have missed some alcohol-related deaths among people who stopped drinking. There isn't enough data on how much alcohol can contribute to HIV/AIDS in the US. Estimates predating the emergence of covid-19 show that alcohol-related deaths only worsened during the first year of the epidemic.
The authors say that more can be done to reduce the harms of drinking.
Increasing alcohol taxes, regulating alcohol outlet density, and alcohol screening could be used to reduce premature deaths.
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