Concerned about the number of people dying from alcohol
It’s only a few Americans who admit it. Many fewer than decades ago. But for those who do admit it, the habit seems to have become drastically deadlier over time, with the alcohol-related mortality rate in the US nearly doubling in the past two decades.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US and found that the alcohol-related mortality rate increased between 1999 and 2024, with a particularly sharp peak during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the number of deaths has decreased since then, the figures remain high.
Impactful Increase
The new findings are consistent with previous studies that also show that the number of deaths from alcohol abuse has been increasing for decades in the US. However, it was not clear what type of deaths alcohol caused, or if the increase in dangerous consumption during the pandemic continued at this time.
To try to answer those questions, researchers analyzed CDC mortality data on 14 causes of alcohol-induced deaths, including liver disease, alcohol poisoning in various forms, and mental and behavioral conditions caused by alcohol consumption.
In total, the alcohol-related death rate increased by 89% between 1999 and 2024, according to the researchers’ findings. The worst year, the most fatal in that period, was 2021, with 54,258 reported deaths. By 2024, the number of deaths had decreased, but the average rate of alcohol-induced deaths remains 25% higher than in 2019.
Trends in Abusive Consumption
The findings also offer some clarity on who dies from abusive alcohol consumption, and why.
Most alcohol-related deaths were due to liver disease, followed by mental and behavioral conditions caused by alcohol. It is interesting to note that the death rate from alcohol poisoning remained low throughout the study period, indicating that acute overdoses are relatively uncommon compared to chronic use and habitual abusive consumption.
Alcohol-related deaths have historically been more common in men, but the researchers’ findings suggest that this may be changing: they found that the highest increase in mortality rate for any demographic in the study period was among women aged 25 to 34, followed by an increase in men of the same age group. Native and Alaska Native populations also appear to be at risk.
“It is particularly concerning that there is a rapid increase in the number of alcohol-induced deaths in women. Although the mortality rate remains higher in men, the gap between the two genders seems to be closing,” said lead author Maria R. D’Orsogna, associate professor in the UCLA Department of Computational Medicine. “What is noteworthy is that in the 25 to 34 age group, the male-to-female mortality rate decreased from 1 in 3 in 1999 to 1 in 2 in 2024.”
The researchers note that they studied deaths more directly linked to alcohol use, so their findings likely do not reflect the total cost of alcohol to Americans’ health. It is known that alcohol increases the risk, or worsens, a number of chronic conditions, including certain cancers. Other studies show that there are over 178,000 alcohol-related deaths in the US each year.
Efforts must continue to understand how to prevent these deaths, say the researchers.
“The increase in alcohol-induced mortality and its heterogeneous trend in demographics highlight the need to better understand the socioeconomic factors linked to abusive alcohol consumption, and to make focused efforts on prevention and treatment, particularly for men, young people, and the Native American and Alaskan populations,” they emphasized.
