Americans are drinking more now than when Prohibition was enacted — a trend that’s been rising for two decades with no clear end in sight.
These days it’s about 2.3 gallons, according to federal calculations. That works out to nearly 500 drinks, or about nine per week. In 1934, a year after Prohibition was repealed, per-capita alcohol consumption was under one gallon, and it’s been up and down since then. The apex was a heavy-drinking spell in the 1970s and 1980s, when U.S. per-person consumption was 2.75 gallons.
The more important finding, other researchers said, was that the number of alcohol-related deaths had doubled since 1999, and the death rate had risen 50%. Some or much of that may be related to the increasingly deadly drugs used in the overdose epidemic, since many people drink while taking drugs, saidAbout three-quarters of alcohol-related deaths are in men. But drinking among women — particularlyWhite’s study found that the female death rate jumped 85%, while the male rate rose 39%.