I 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.
As 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".
As 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?!
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.
The 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.
Some 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.
Maryland 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.
You 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.
Can 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.
The 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.
Agreed, 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.
The 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?
Interesting 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.
I 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.
For the alcohol consumption questions, they ask about the times people drank in the previous 30 days.
>You go to a 4th of July party and now you're an excessive drinker for the whole year?
This survey isn't used to morally judge populations, and the (very commonly used) summary statistics for heavy drinking don't mean every single respondents meeting those criteria is a heavy drinker. On a personal level, it depends on body mass, overall health, yadda yadda. But it's a good measure, because for the average man, 5 drinks in one day is definitely unhealthy. And, for everyone who gets swept up in that aggregate because St. Patrick's Day or the 4th of July was recent, there are people doing dry January or called in September. It averages out.
And, even if you argue all that, the data is still useful because it's relative to everyone else. Different definitions should yield roughly the same proportions of heavy drinkers between counties.
>cultural aspects don't vary that much just because of an imaginary administrative line
Those lines aren't arbitrary. They were usually drawn along physical barriers. Those barriers also sorted people into towns and heavily influenced how they intermingled in the past.
I work with county data, and stark differences between neighbors is very common across all data types. For instance, Philadelphia is abysmal for almost all health measures. But Chester county, just west of it, does amazingly. Why? Because Philadelphians have more pollution, lower average income, and a host of other problems. Chester is home to a lot of rich people who commute to Philadelphia.
The '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.
I 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.
Occasional 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.
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?
I 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).
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.
Really? 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.
Your government would still consider it drinking in excess of their guidelines, which is binge drinking. One of your other comments suggests you know this, as you're aware that it's not something you should do everyday.
Yes, I agree that is what the government say. I'm just telling you what happens in reality.
And I don't do it every day because I am old and hangovers are now a multi-day affair. In my younger days I could have easily done Friday, Saturday and possibly Sunday.
At least in Finland, no, that wouldn’t be normal. I’m sure there are people who drink a bottle of wine (or equivalent) during lunch, but that would definitely raise some serious eyebrows among most people.
In the USA it's often called "day drinking" and it usually coincides with brunch (never heard the term "social lunch" here) on the weekend. As in "rosé all day", or "bottomless bloody mary's" with a brunch purchase, etc.
I mean I wouldn't do it every day, but if I went to, say, dinner in the evening or Sunday lunch (and obviously didn't have to drive) I could drink a bottle of wine over the course of a 2-3 hour meal easily.
NYC 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?
Thompkins 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.
The 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.
