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Meepzors t1_ivmsi9z wrote

I question these numbers. 4.76 gal = 18000ml of alcohol. That's like 60 45 liters of vodka a year? So 1.2 full bottles almost a bottle of vodka per capita per week? Assuming it's beer, 5% alcohol 12oz = 350ml cans, that's 1000 beers a year or about 3 a day? Per capita? That can't be right... Can it?

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snakalope t1_ivnr5i2 wrote

I highly doubt the chart is counting the content of alcohol in the drinks consumed. It's most likely just counting how large the sales of alcoholic beverages are, no matter if it's 5% beer or 98% everclear.

An average of 4.76 gallons worth of alcoholic beverages per person in NH. May make it seem low, but NH only has a population of about 1.3mil, whereas PA with lower sales per person has more than 10x the population.

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SomethingMoreToSay t1_ivnr7cr wrote

>I question these numbers. 4.76 gal = 18000ml of alcohol.

Others have pointed out that the figures for NH are distorted by residents from MA and elsewhere crossing into NH to buy alcohol.

The nationwide average of 2.35 gallons is more interesting though. That's 8.9 litres per person, and Wikipedia says that's not very much by European standards. Many European countries average over 12 litres per person.

Even 12 litres seems a lot to me. A typical bottle of wine (750ml, 12-13% abv) has ~100ml of alcohol, so that's 120 bottles of wine per year or one every 3 days. Or with your 350ml 5% beer, that's 17.5ml of alcohol per can, so that's nearly 700 cans per year, or 13 cans per week. To my mind these are high as averages. But I guess the distribution has a long, heavy tail. I imagine that if we looked at the median or the mode, the numbers would be more relatable.

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