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.
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.