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America's Booziest and Driest Counties
- jandrese 2y agoI am suspicious that reporting methods/thresholds may vary by state. The lines follow political boundaries too closely. When you see a very dry county next to a boozy one despite both being in the same metro area and with broadly similar populations it is hard to believe the data is accurate. Growing up in West Virginia I also don't think it is especially dry compared to neighboring Virginia or Ohio.
- soared 2y agoThe result are by county, so they will follow political boundaries no matter what since that’s how counties are designed. Look at Denver - very dark red obtuse shapes next to mild yellow on all sides.
- ryukoposting 2y agoEver heard of the Tavern League? At least one state in the union is actually more alcoholic than the others, in part because of its politics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavern_League_of_Wisconsin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavern_League_of_Wisconsin
- bongodongobob 2y agoAs a Wisconsinite, fuck the tavern league. I love beer but these guys have so much power they're actually holding Wisconsin back. They're why we don't have alcohol delivery services, legalized marijuana, and taprooms can't serve food because "it'll hurt brick and mortar bar sales".
- ryukoposting 2y agoAs a lifelong midwesterner and recent Wisconsin transplant, the Tavern League might be the most bizarre thing I've ever encountered in the politics of my home state. I grew up in a state where, for a few years, we had more former governors in jail than out of jail. I also lived in a state whose Democrats don't go by that name - oh no, they're the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, for cripe's sake! Yet, Wisconsin has both Illinois and Minnesota beat with its enormously powerful and well-funded lobbying group of... bars?!
- bongodongobob 2y agoYeah, it's completely insane. It's also a bit of a racket too from what I've heard. They are partnered up with advertising, marketing, music booking agencies, atm/gambling services, etc and you'll be left out of things if you're a bar and not a member. They have way too much power.
- cies 2y agoBooze taxes, legal drinking ages, school curriculum -- there are many things that influence the booziness that can differ wildly per state. Not saying you are not right.
- Aurornis 2y agoSome of the places I’ve lived have had stark cultural differences from one county to the next. You can cross an invisible line and suddenly everything is different, from the people to the liquor laws. I believe it.
- sybercecurity 2y agoMaryland is like that - the sales laws vary per county. Not a lot and there is mostly commonality, but enough to notice. Then DC and Virginia is different too, so it feels even weirder. There is enough cross state line traffic that people forget they are different states.
- vharuck 2y agoCan you come up with a reason the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey would be wrong here? It groups respondents by county of residence. It's a long-running, well-funded, and valuable survey.
- orwin 2y agoYou have a lot of homebrewed beer in WV (and i mean a lot, enough to have a full day 300 people festival in the middle of nowhere). Ans you can still find some under the mantle moonshine there too, at least that was the case in 2019. If its based on sale taxes, it's probably what cause the difference.
- relaxing 2y agoGrowing up in WV, were you friends with a lot of Evangelical types? Fully 25% of the state is Baptist or Pentecostal, whereas OH is closer to 10%.
- gadders 2y agoBased on American definitions of binge drinking, one bottle of wine is a "binge". In the UK (and probably most of Europe) that's what we have with a social lunch.
- nemo44x 2y agoI think the surgeon general of Basque recommends no more than 7 glasses of wine a day.
- GJim 2y agoVery true. American drinking culture is rather different. I recall American work colleagues visiting us being horrified at going out for a lunchtime pint. ("What if your manager or HR finds out"; "Errm, we're joining them, they are already there"). They never even got to see the Friday night carnage that goes on in most British pubs.
- kasey_junk 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol... The WHO data suggests that Americans drink about 4ml less alcohol a day than Brits.
- GJim 2y agoConsumption != Culture
- boomboomsubban 2y agoReally? One person drinking five glasses of wine over lunch seems normal to you? Looking at the UK guidelines, a bottle of wine is generally ten units and they suggest under fourteen units a week spread out over three or more days. So that "social lunch" seems to be binge drinking in the UK too.
- gadders 2y ago
- ryukoposting 2y agoRoll out the barrel! More seriously, the fact that Wisconsin is clearly visible, down to the exact state border, is remarkable.
- barryrandall 2y agoThe legislature is run by the Tavern League, whose mission is to render unavailable or unattractive all activities that aren't working or drinking beer at a Tavern League member bar.
- josefresco 2y agoWisconsin, are you okay?
- nemo44x 2y agoI think Lewis Black said it best: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7WlwumGkSec https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7WlwumGkSec
- itronitron 2y agoIt's somehow related to Euchre.
- noxford1 2y agoInteresting to see Gallatin County (Bozeman, MT) being #1 I am also pretty sure we have the highest rate of fatal drinking + driving incidents. [1] Our breweries also close at 8pm and you can get a maximum of three drinks. However, you can just go to the nearest bar / casino / liquor store (its the same place) and drink until 2am. Pretty backwards. It's also insanely cost prohibitive to get just a beer + wine license in Bozeman. A full liquor license is almost a magnitude more expensive. I heard the local Texas Roadhouse paid 1.4 million for their full license. [1] The scale of Montana is insane. Its about 1.5 times the size of England with 2% of the population. When were driving to the next town over it can be 45 minutes and you can happily pass cops cruising at 90. Mix this with alcohol and you have a lot of bad accidents.
- strikelaserclaw 2y agowhy do they drink so much there? boredom?
- kylecazar 2y agoWyoming blows my mind for a similar reason.. 100k square miles, half a million people.
- ordersofmag 2y agoThe color scale on this map distorts one's perception of where there are significant differences. There are sharp color boundaries at arbitrary points on a color scale and counter-intuitive gradations of color (while greens reflect the driest counties, the darkest green is actually the least dry of the greens). With a more continuous color scale this map would seem a lot less dramatic.
- lscharen 2y agoAgreed, the differences aren't as stark as the map seems. Almost all of the states fall between 15% and 25% percent of the population. Wisconsin stands out at 25.29% of the population labeled as excessive drinkers due to the large amount of dark red, but South Dakota is at 22.43% -- less than 3% difference, but that state is mostly orange. For a county example, Hardin, TX is 19.13% and Rusk, WI is 20.82%. A difference of just under 1.7%, but the Wisconsin county is bright red and the Texas county is orange.
- abetusk 2y agoThompkins county in NY is the red area in the bottom middle. This is where Cornell is (Ithaca, NY), so has a lot of college students and a lot of bars.
- api 2y agoI don't believe the Bible Belt for one second. I grew up in Southeastern Kentucky until I was about 10, in Pulaski county. It was a dry county at the time. I remember my mom's friends going on road trips for booze, and later on my mom told me that some people would vote for it to stay a dry county because they liked these road trips. I'm sure there were also people making money bringing in quantities and selling it under the table. I also have a memory of a lake cop pulling over our boat on Lake Cumberland (huge tourist lake there) and making a quip about how much he hates finding weed on that lake... because it was always such bad weed. I remember it because of everyone laughing. So yeah, don't believe that swath of green across Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Ask anyone else who has ever lived there. It's at least as yellow as Ohio and the other surrounding areas, probably with some patches of red. Also check out Oklahoma. You're telling me the exact outline of Oklahoma is green but not the surrounding states? Wisconsin though is 100% accurate.
- User23 2y agoI could say the same about San Diego. Only 20% yeah right it’s got to be closer to 50%. Except we’re both just offering anecdotes. Excessive drinkers are more conspicuous to begin with, and nobody is telling stories about the overwhelming majority of people who don’t drink excessively like “and then my mom didn’t drink again.” (Unless of course she’s a recovering alcoholic).
- dumbo-octopus 2y agoThe metric they use for "excessive drinkers" is pretty inflexible. It, for instance, does not take into account weight whatsoever. I can drink the entire "excessive binge drinker" amount (5 beers) in 1 sitting and I wouldn't even be legally drunk. Also the time window is not given anywhere. If I get not-quite-drunk once, am I suddenly an "excessive drinker" for life?
- TrackerFF 2y agoI'd be interested in seeing a similar map with opioid usage/ODs/deaths.
- teeray 2y agoFascinating to see that this particular pattern in the south is another phenomenon influenced by ancient geology: https://geospatial.com/the-blue-swoosh-and-the-black-belt-at-the-cross-section-of-geology-and-human-geography/ https://geospatial.com/the-blue-swoosh-and-the-black-belt-at...
- SeanLuke 2y ago> Driest: % of people in , are excessive drinkers This is a strange definition of "driest". I'd have thought driest simply meant lowest mean alcohol consumption.
- PedroBatista 2y agoI don't have solid evidence to discredit the map/data and I also don't fully understand the CDC rating connected to this map, for ex. 5 or more drinks on a single occasion. OK and how many occasions? You go to a 4th of July party and now you're an excessive drinker for the whole year? Visually the map might be "pretty", but something's off, cultural aspects don't vary that much just because of an imaginary administrative line. But overall, if you squint a lot it's more of less right, northern states tend to booze a lot.
- matwood 2y agoTo your party point. It also wouldn't account for time. 5 drinks over the course of a 4-5 hour party is different than 5 drinks in an hour.
- trey-jones 2y agoOccasional excessive drinker reporting in. You're right, "excessive drinking" is difficult to quantify, and any vagueness of definition will leave us with what I would call "vagueness" or "incompleteness" of data. Not "inaccuracy" though, because I think we can understand the limitations of reporting, and the trends are likely correct.
- slfnflctd 2y agoThe 'most severe' category for problem drinking is usually ridiculous to me in nearly every study on this subject I've seen, especially in more recent decades. Lumping together the guy who usually drinks a 6-pack on Fridays with the lady who puts away a fifth of vodka every single day makes no sense to me. There should be much more granularity.
- pookha 2y agoI like it. Reminds me of BMI. It's easy to slip into the warm soothing waters of alcoholism and not even realize it. Knowing that killing a six-pack every three days is on scale with alchoholism can keep you honest with yourself. You can fool yourself into thinking your weight is in check but in reality your two pounds away from being obese (defined by BMI) and developing the associated health risks.
- nemo44x 2y agoNYC is interesting in that Manhattan is red (boozers), Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island are green (dry), and Brooklyn is yellow (average). Manhattan makes sense I guess since people go to bars and restaurants often but not sure on the divergence from the other places. Immigrints?
- farmerbb 2y agoI don't understand the sorting on the "Top 10s per state" list. Maryland through Missouri are inexplicably sandwiched between Oregon and Pennsylvania. I wonder what sorting algorithm they're using, or if the list was just manually sorted and those states are out of order due to a copy-paste error.
- from-nibly 2y agoWithout opening the link I knew utah county utah would be the driest.