America has a drinking problem.
Did you know that binge drinking is the most common and costly pattern of excessive alcohol use in the United States? Binge drinking is defined as consuming 5 or more drinks on an occasion for men or 4 or more drinks on an occasion for women.
Much of the following statistical information comes from the CDC. One in six US adults binge drinks, with 25% doing so at least weekly. Binge drinking is just one pattern of excessive drinking, but it accounts for nearly all excessive drinking. Over 90% of US adults who drink excessively report binge drinking.
Who binge drinks?
Binge drinking is most common among younger adults aged 18–34.
Binge drinking is more common among men than among women.
one study determined that 56% of college athletes binge drink when not competing and 35% binge drink in season.
Binge drinking is most common among adults with higher household incomes ($75,000 or more), non-Hispanic White, or in the Midwest.
Binge drinkers who are female are more likely than non-drinking women to have unprotected sex, multiple sex partners, unintended pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases
Binge Drinking is associated with many health problems and has other serious risks.
2300 people die every year from alcohol poisoning (Excessive alcohol use -not just binge drinking - is known to kill more than 140,000 people in the United States each year)
Unintentional injuries such as motor vehicle crashes, falls, burns, and alcohol poisoning.
Violence including homicide, suicide, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault.
Sexually transmitted diseases.
Unintended pregnancy and poor pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage and stillbirth.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Sudden infant death syndrome.
Chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and liver disease.
Cancer of the breast (among females), liver, colon, rectum, mouth, pharynx, larynx, and esophagus.
Memory and learning problems.
The Bible is accurate when it states the following:
Proverbs 23:29–35
29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?
30 They that tarry long at the wine; They that go to seek mixed wine.
31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, When it giveth his colour in the cup, When it moveth itself aright.
32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, And stingeth like an adder.
33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, And thine heart shall utter perverse things.
34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, Or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; They have beaten me, and I felt it not: When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
Excessive drinking, including binge drinking, costs the United States $249 billion in 2010, or $2.05 per drink. These costs were from lost work productivity, health care expenditures, criminal justice costs, and other expenses. Binge drinking accounted for 77% of these costs, or $191 billion.
Of this $2.05 per drink cost/loss in the United States, the government ends up paying about 80 cents per drink. However, the federal government and states only bring in about 21 cents per drink on average in alcohol taxes, according to new research in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. This leaves the majority of the cost of alcohol's harms borne by those who don't drink excessively or who don't drink at all. Georgia taxpayers spent $6.931 billion as a result of excessive alcohol use in 2010; adjusted for inflation, this is equivalent to $9.357 billion or $2.86 per drink in 2022 US$.
Timothy S. Naimi, M.D., M.P.H., (of the Boston Medical Center and the Boston University School of Public Health) states, "The disparity between alcohol-related cost to government and alcohol taxes amounts to a large taxpayer-funded subsidy of excessive drinking and alcohol companies.”
The Bible is true when it speaks about the economic loss attributable to alcohol use.
Proverbs 23:20–21
20 Be not among winebibbers;
Among riotous eaters of flesh:
21 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty:
And drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
Although alcohol use is a spiritual, moral, and economic problem in America, there is deliverance through Christ for the scourge of alcohol addiction.
Come back next week for an amazing story of a famous man, a sports figure, who battled alcohol but who eventually got deliverance from that which was destroying his life.