ALCOHOL ABUSE

Alcohol abuse is a huge problem in America today. The cost of alcohol abuse is staggering. In America and around the world alcohol abuse is a major social health problem. The negative effects of alcohol abuse include social, economic, family, health, and career, psychological and public safety.

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The Economic Costs of Alcohol Abuse

During the past two decades, five major studies have estimated the economic costs of alcohol abuse1 in the United States using the "cost of illness" approach, which expresses the multidimensional impact of a health problem in dollars.

Alcohol Abuse Statistics

Forty-four percent of the adult U.S. population (aged 18 and over) is current alcohol drinkers who have consumed at least 12 drinks in the preceding year. Although most people who drink do so safely, the minority who consume alcohol heavily produce an impact that ripples outward to encompass their families, friends, and communities.

The most recent estimate of the overall economic cost of alcohol abuse was $185 billion for 1998, which is a projection based on the comprehensive cost estimate of $148 billion for 1992.

More than 70 percent of the estimated costs of alcohol abuse for 1998 were attributed to lost productivity ($134.2 billion), including losses from alcohol-related illness ($87.6 billion), premature death ($36.5 billion), and crime ($10.1 billion).

The remaining estimated costs included health care expenditures ($26.3 billion, or 14.3 percent of the total), such as the costs of treating alcohol abuse and dependence ($7.5 billion) and the costs of treating the adverse medical consequences of alcohol consumption ($18.9 billion); as well as property and administrative costs of alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes ($15.7 billion, or 8.5 percent); and criminal justice system costs of alcohol-related crime ($6.3 billion, or 3.4 percent).

The precision of some estimates is limited significantly by the quality of available data. For example, some cost components must be estimated by indirect means. An important example is the value of goods and services that were not produced because of alcohol problems (i.e., productivity losses).

In addition, significant aspects of alcohol-related problems, such as human suffering, are not easily quantified in terms of dollars and are therefore omitted from the analyses. Nevertheless, the range of estimates provides a conservative overview of the costs to society of alcohol-related problems.

• Approximately 14 million Americans-7.4 percent of the population -meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse or alcoholism.
  


• More than one-half of American adults have a close family member who has or has had alcoholism.
  


• Approximately one in four children younger than 18 years old in the United States is exposed to alcohol abuse or alcohol dependence in the family.
  


• Among people ages 21-22, 85 percent of men and 76 percent of women have used alcohol within the last 30 days
  


• 55 percent of men ages 21-22 and 33 percent of women ages 19-20 drank five or more drinks in a row in the past 2 weeks
  


• People ages 18-29 have the highest rates of past-year alcohol abuse and dependence

Trends in Alcohol Abuse

Almost half of Americans aged 12 or older reported being current drinkers of alcohol in the 2001survey (48.3 percent). This translates to an estimated 109 million people. Both the rate of alcohol use and the number of drinkers increased from 2000, when 104 million, or 46.6 percent, of people aged 12 or older reported drinking in the past 30 days.

Approximately one fifth (20.5 percent) of persons aged 12 or older participated in binge drinking at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey. Although the number of current drinkers increased between 2000 and 2001, the number of those reporting binge drinking did not change significantly.

The highest prevalence of both binge and heavy drinking in 2001 was for young adults aged 18 to 25, with the peak rate occurring at age 21. The rate of binge drinking was 38.7 percent for young adults and 48.2 percent at age 21.

Heavy alcohol use was reported by 13.6 percent of persons aged 18 to 25 and by 17.8 percent of persons aged 21. Binge and heavy alcohol use rates decreased faster with increasing age than did rates of past month alcohol use.

While 55.2 percent of the population aged 45 to 49 in 2001 were current drinkers, 19.1 percent of persons within this age range binge drank and 5.4 percent drank heavily. Binge and heavy drinking were relatively rare among people aged 65 or older, with reported rates of 5.8 and 1.4 percent, respectively.

Among youths aged 12 to 17, an estimated 17.3 percent used alcohol in the month prior to the survey interview. This rate was higher than the rate of youth alcohol using reported in 2000 (16.4 percent). Of all youths, 10.6 percent were binge drinkers, and 2.5 percent were heavy drinkers. These are roughly the same percentages as those reported in 2000 (10.4 and 2.6 percent, respectively).

• United States per capita consumption of all alcoholic beverages combined in 2005 was 2.24 gallons, representing a 0.4 percent increase from 2.23 gallons in 2004.
  


• Between 2004 and 2005, changes in overall per capita consumption of alcohol included increases in 29 states, decreases in 20 states and the District of Columbia, and no change in two states.

Underage Alcohol Use and Abuse

• In 2007, about 10.7 million persons aged 12 to 20 (27.9 percent of this age group) reported drinking alcohol in the past month. Approximately 7.2 million (18.6 percent) were binge drinkers, and 2.3 million (6.0 percent) were heavy drinkers. These figures have remained essentially the same since the 2002 survey.
  


• Rates of current alcohol use increased with increasing age among underage persons. In 2007, 3.5 percent of persons aged 12 or 13, 14.7 percent of persons aged 14 or 15, 29.0 percent of 16 or 17 year olds, and 50.7 percent of 18 to 20 year olds drank alcohol during the 30 days before they were surveyed. This pattern has remained stable since 2002.
  

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