I’m here to gore your ox again, but this time I have the assistance of the federal government. I have long been beating my drum to draw attention to the idea that besides nicotine, alcohol is the most deadly drug available, but no one has listened. In fact, we no longer even recognize alcohol as a drug.
Back in the late 1980s, when I first started in the field of substance use disorders, no one ever called alcohol anything but a drug, as in “alcohol and other drugs.” That was the phrase: “alcohol and other drugs.” People were addicted to “alcohol and other drugs.” People’s lives were torn apart by “alcohol and other drugs.” We needed to educate children about “alcohol and other drugs.”
However, right around that time, despite the fact that alcohol has always been lethal, the US government promised the alcohol industry to no longer refer to alcohol as a drug. This opened up funding, especially for that great – and faulty – “red wine is heart-healthy” study in the early 2000s.
This new language also started the “war on drugs” and “your brain on drugs” messaging. Alcohol is safe; just stay away from DRUGS.
Fast forward 20 years, and no one remembers that alcohol is a drug, and the money keeps flowing in from the alcohol industry. In 2018 the government actually had to shut down a study about moderate drinking because the $100 million price tag was being footed by…you guessed it…the alcohol industry. (NY Times) How unbiased could THAT study be?
Which brings us to 2022, amid the throes of the COVID pandemic and the opioid epidemic. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicates that about 62.3% of the population aged 12 and older, or 174,339,000 individuals, drank alcohol in 2022. Stated another way, 37.7% of the population drank no alcohol in 2022, but we never hear about them.
In 2022, over 140,000 deaths were alcohol related, and nearly 83,000 deaths were opioid-related, but, while you couldn’t swing a dead cat before landing on a story about how opioids were killing our people, we rarely saw one that said alcohol was also killing them.
Even more concerning is that, while only 62.3% of those aged 12 and up even reported drinking in 2022, 21.7% of that population reported “binge drinking” in the past month. So they aren’t just DRINKING; they’re drinking to drunkenness, which is pretty much the definition of binge drinking. Oh, I know…“Everyone does that at one point in their lives!”
Sadly, 5.7% of the population aged 12 and over, including 6.3% of those aged 18 and over, reported heavy use of alcohol in the previous month…so that binge drinking – that drinking to drunkenness…it’s not just that one time. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines “heavy use” as 5 or more drinks on any day or 15 or more per week for males and 4 or more drinks on any day or 8 or more per week for females. Laughably, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has its own definition of “heavy use”: binge drinking on 5 or more days in the past 30 days.
Either way, we are drinking too damn much. But, to me, that’s not even the worst of it. What’s worse is that it’s become so commonplace. Try telling someone that alcohol is considered unhealthy after more than one drink per day for females and more than two drinks per day for males. Try suggesting that knocking back two drinks each weeknight and five on the weekends is concerning. Try pointing out that alcohol is a carcinogen, known to cause at least seven types of cancer and that, in the US, alcohol use accounts for about 6% of cancers and 4% of deaths by cancer. (cancer.org)
Jokes will be made; you’ll be scorned; people will get angry; no one will listen.
And that’s STILL not the worst of it. The WORST of it is that we don’t talk about it. We act as though there’s just nothing wrong with all the drinking we’re doing and there’s nothing that can be done. Alcohol is legal so it must be safe, right? Opioids are the big killers, right? Wrong and wrong. And with the support of the government sounding the alarm only on opioids, we as a society have become confidently wrong. We no longer know the truth, but we confidently share the misinformation.
Here are the facts:
Alcohol is dangerous.
It’s killing our loved ones.
It’s ruining our families.
Just because it’s legal – and just because the government sold us out to the deep pockets of the alcohol industry – doesn’t mean that it’s safe.
Alcohol is a drug…one of the most deadly.
References
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/diet-physical-activity/alcohol-use-and-cancer.html
Guided by Guida 
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