Here we are, roughly five months into the Covid-19 epidemic in the U.S. and the virus has already killed killed 151,794 people in the U.S, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Covid tracker. So what is the anti-alcohol Centers for Disease Control & Prevention focused on this week? You guessed it — alcohol.
This week’s Mortality & Morbidity Weekly Report doesn’t even break new ground when it tells us that excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 93,000 deaths in the United States each year, shortening the lives of those who die by an average of almost 29 years.
More than half of all alcohol-attributable deaths were due to drinking too much over time, CDC tells us, inclding deaths from cancer, liver disease, and heart disease. Of all alcohol-attributable deaths, 56% involved adults 35–64 years old.
Implementing effective strategies to prevent excessive drinking, including those recommended by the Community Preventive Services Task Force (e.g., increasing alcohol taxes, regulating the number and concentration of alcohol outlets), could reduce alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost, the study says.
An average of 255 Americans die from excessive drinking every day, shortening their lives by an average of 29 years. The majority of these alcohol-attributable deaths involved males, and approximately four in five deaths involved adults aged ≥35 years.
The number of alcohol-attributable deaths among adults aged ≥65 years was nearly double that among adults aged 20–34 years. Approximately one half of alcohol-attributable deaths were caused by chronic conditions, but acute alcohol-attributable deaths, all of which were caused by binge drinking, accounted for the majority of the YPLL from excessive drinking.
Little progress has been made in preventing deaths caused by excessive drinking; the average annual estimates of alcohol-attributable deaths and YPLL in this report are slightly higher than estimates for 2006–2010, and the age-adjusted alcohol-attributable death rates are similar, suggesting that excessive drinking remains a leading preventable cause of death and disability, the study says.
From 2006–2010 (5) to 2011–2015, average annual deaths caused by alcohol dependence increased 14.2%, from 3,728 to 4,258, and deaths caused by alcoholic liver disease increased 23.6%, from 14,695 to 18,164. These findings are consistent with reported increasing trends in alcohol-induced deaths (e.g., deaths from conditions wholly attributable to alcohol) among adults aged ≥25 years,††† including alcoholic liver disease,§§§ as well as with increases in per capita alcohol consumption during the past 2 decades.¶¶¶
Age-adjusted alcohol-attributable death rates varied approximately twofold across states, but deaths caused by excessive drinking were common across the country. The differences in alcohol-attributable death and YPLL rates in states might be partially explained by varying patterns of excessive alcohol use, particularly binge drinking, which is affected by state-level alcohol pricing and availability strategies (6) and differential access to medical care, the study says.