The State Where The Most Americans Drink Themselves To Death
Posted: 06/26/2014 12:02 pm EDT
Since Colorado legalized marijuana last year, politicians and pundits have focused intently on health and safety concerns surrounding legal weed.
But a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests a more imminent danger for the state and its neighbors: alcohol.
According to the report, published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, Colorado and other Mountain-region states have the highest alcohol-related death rates in the country -- several points higher than the national average of one in 10 deaths.
New Mexico leads the country with 16.4 percent of alcohol-related deaths, while Maryland has the lowest rate at 7.5 percent. Regionally, Alaska and almost all of the Mountain-region states have alcohol-related death rates higher than the national average. The stark exception: Utah, which has some of the most restrictive alcohol selling and purchasing laws in the U.S.
"Excessive alcohol use is a huge public health problem," study researcher Dr. Robert Brewer, of the CDC's Alcohol Program, told The Huffington Post. "It's killing people in the prime of their lives."
For the report, CDC researchers tallied alcohol-related causes of deaths from 2006 to 2010. They scanned 54 different causes of death linked to alcohol, which range from acute conditions like violence, alcohol poisoning and motor vehicle collisions, to chronic conditions like breast cancer and heart disease.
Researchers estimate that excessive drinking kills an average of 88,000 people in the U.S. each year, and shortened the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. About 70 percent of these deaths involve working-age adults ages 20 to 64.
more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/alcohol-deaths-states-us_n_5532034.html?ncid=webmail1
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