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Alcohol, the most widely used psychoactive drug in the
United States,1 has unique pharmacological effects on the
person drinking it.2
Alcohol contributes to 100,000 deaths annually, making it the third leading cause of preventable mortality in the US, after tobacco and diet/activity patterns.3
Among 9,484 deaths attributed to non-medical use of other drugs in 1996, 37% also involved alcohol.4
More than seven percent of the population ages 18 years and older--nearly 13.8 million Americans--have problems with drinking, including 8.1 million people who are alcoholic. Almost three times as many men (9.8 million) as women (3.9 million) are problem drinkers, and prevalence is highest for both sexes in the 18-to-29-years-old age group.
About 43% of US adults--76 million people--have been exposed to alcoholism in the family: they grew up with or married an alcoholic or a problem drinker or had a blood relative who was ever an alcoholic or problem drinker.
62% of high school seniors report that they have been drunk; 31% say that have had five or more drinks in a row during the last two weeks.
People who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who begin at age 21.
From 1985 to 1992, the economic costs of alcoholism and alcohol-related problems rose 42% to $148 billion. Two-thirds of the costs related to lost productivity, either due to alcohol-related illness (45.7%) or premature death (21.2%). Most of the remaining costs were in the form of health care expenditures to treat alcohol use disorders and the medical consquences of alcohol consumption (12.7%), property and administrative costs of alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes (9.2%), and various additional costs of alcohol-related crime (8.6%). Based on inflation and population growth, the estimated costs for 1995 total $166.5 billion
Nearly one-fourth of all persons admitted to general hospitals have alcohol problems or are undiagnosed alcoholics being treated for the consequences of their drinking
On average, untreated alcoholics incur general health care costs at least 100% higher than those of nonalcoholics, and this disparity may exist as long as 10 years before entry into treatment.
Based on victim reports, each year 183,000 (37%) rapes and sexual assaults involve alcohol use by the offender, as do just over 197,000 (15%) of robberies, about 661,000 (27%) aggravated assaults, and nearly 1.7 million (25%) simple assaults.
Alcohol is typically found in the offender, victim or both in about half of all homicides and serious assaults, as well as in a high percentage of sex-related crimes, robberies, and incidents of domestic violence, and alcohol-related problems are disproportionately found among both juvenile and adult criminal offenders.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which can occur when women drink during pregnancy, is the leading known environmental cause of mental retardation in the Western World.
