'As many as 3 million people 60 and over have a problem with alcohol.'
I do realize by the way this is a serious problem. I hope I did not offend anyone with my childish behavior. Mea Culpa. I do realize that I am 17, and that I'm bored at the moment.
Which is of course no excuse
Okay, a bit of info cobbled together from stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Had to put some stuff in Excel and play with it to get the information in a useful format.)
As of 1999...
Washington ranked 34th out of the 50 states and Washington D.C. in per capita alcohol consumption.
Oregon ranked 22nd.
Ohio ranked 37th.
California, where you can by any legal form of alcohol at a supermarket until 2:00 am 7 days a week ranked 32nd.
However, Washington State ranked 50th in terms of amount of alcohol consumed per drinker, with 39.3% of the population abstaining from alcohol.
Oregon ranked 40th in this regard, with 39.1% abstaining.
Ohio ranked 22nd, with a whopping 56.2% of people abstaining from alcohol. (There is a large Amish population in Ohio, but it can't be large enough to have such an impact. I wonder wy so many people from Ohio don't drink...)
California ranked 47th, with 39.6% abstaining.
I don't see any pattern there at all.
Rick d'Israeli wrote:You can buy and smoke pot here legally from the age of 16, though I have never done that, nor any of my friends. And yes, the Netherlands is a country with no restrictions...
Do you need karaoke providers?
Odd that California ranks so low in consumption, patiodog. What with the wine industry there, one would expect everyone to guzzle now and then. Apparently not.
So who's #1?
Interesting, Rick. I've heard the same about sex. To wit, that young women in Brazil are able to dress quite sexy but aren't as promiscuous as American teens, whose parents are more prudish. I don't know how true it is, but it's that forbidden fruit factor. If you're allowed to do something at an early age, it's not rebellious or fun, so not as attractive as if you have to sneak around and be bad to do it.
I don't how its concerning sex, but we are very open here in the Netherlands concerning sex...it's no taboo anymore.
Top 10 in per capita alcohol consumption (at least according to the page, in 1999):
New Hampshire
Nevada
District of
Delaware
Alaska
Wisconsin
Arizona
Florida
Colorado
Montana
Top 10 in highest percentage abstaining from alcohol:
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Utah
West Virginia
Arizona
Kentucky
Arkansas
Mississippi
Alabama
North Carolina
Top 10 in alcohol consumed per drinker:
Arizona
District of Columbia
Nevada
Tennessee
New Hampshire
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Mississippi
Louisiana
West Virginia
Now, a few notes about this: they don't say how they're definining amount consumed. It could be that they're considering a liter of wine as equivalent to a liter of gin. The figures (except for the abstinence figures) are based on alcohol sales. This could artificially inflate the figures for, say, Nevada, where hundreds of thousand and perhaps millions of tourists come and drink fairly heavily.
One thing that sticks out, though: in Oklahoma you apparently either don't drink or you drink a whole lot.
...and Tennessee, and Arizona...
Interesting stats, for sure. Some of it makes intuitive sense (Alaska and Nevada being high), but a lot of it doesn't. But that's the joy of statistics!
Yeah. I wish they said something about their methodology. In WA, for instance, people who do drink seem to go mainly for beer and wine. (Or maybe it just seemed that way to me because of the way they apportion liquor licenses and the places I went to drink.)
Getting a hard booze license around here is quite an achievement, I believe...
It's the prohibition thing again. If you were to have a more permissive attitude then people develop a 'take it or leave it' approach. The moment you say 'You can't!', it makes it desirable.
I still am unable to believe that there are states that are dry. In a place like the US where you have a constitutional right to firearms and pornography and joining the KKK, there are places where you CANNOT BUY A DRINK BECAUSE IT IS FORBIDDEN!
Are there actually whole states that are dry???
Utah for one. I have just tried to find a definitive listing - no luck yet.
Wow. Utah, I should have suspected as much.
..and 3.2% aint beer.
The Utah State Liquor Store? Sounds positively Soviet!
Finally found something...
I just thought about it. Utah is a place where you can have an unlimited number of mother-in-laws, but limited access to booze. Confounds logic, doesn't it?
