Alcohol Is Wreaking Havoc on U.S. Public Health. American Society Looks the Other Way

Alcohol is central to American life because of its social and cultural benefits to the many people who drink without issue. But alcohol’s ubiquity persists in the face of mountains of research linking heavy drinking to cancer, heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline, developmental disorders, gun violence, injuries, and countless other consequences. Alcohol-related injuries, disease, and fatalities have spiked in recent years, starting in 2020. Older adults, women, and young people have been especially harmed, including by a sharp rise in liver-related deaths. Alcohol-related emergency department visits nearly doubled in the U.S. between 2003 and 2022.

For those addicted, alcohol is “an absolute poison,” Jenny Wilson, an emergency physician in downtown Reno, Nev., said. Acute and chronic problems caused by excessive alcohol use show up in her work, “every single day, multiple, multiple times. Without question.”

But the mass death and sickening of Americans due to drinking is not an inevitability. A STAT investigation shows that this epidemic is a generational failure of the medical and public health systems, of industry, and of government — and that the Trump administration is wasting a unique opportunity to attack the problem.