Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/alcohol-consumption-by-state

Tool: Datawrapper and Canva

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I bet if you broke the UP away from the lower peninsula of Michigan it would be a loooooot darker blue up there.

Go figure that alcohol consumption is higher in places with nothing to do or are fairly cold lol

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Whose goal are we talking about? Why should I care about a goal that someone else set? Fuck their goal. My goal is to drink just as much alcohol as I feel like.

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Are we sure this isn’t just Massachusetts residents buying tax free liquor?

Ah! I was thinking "I've heard NH is the state most like England, but this seems extreme", but that would make more sense.

Everyone in northern Massachusetts does their shopping in New Hampshire. There’s no toll and a ten minute drive can save you hundreds of dollars when you’re buying computers, iPhones, TVs, etc

Is that no sales tax in NH then, or lower booze taxes too?

I think this is the same for DE.

I was visiting Salt Lake City several years ago and I was looking for a place to meet a friend for a drink. I went in a convenience store and asked the clerk where the nearest bar was and he looked at me like I'd pulled a gun on him.

Also in Utah: I was staying at Arches National Park, and was having dinner one evening in the lodge restaurant. It was a Sunday evening and a group of German almost rioted when they found out they couldn't buy beer on Sunday.

Both, I believe

Probably both. Also, the lengths people will go to not to pay the deposit on their bottles. There are massive liquor stores right across the state line.

Devout members of the LDS church (Mormons) don't drink alcohol. Utah having a larger population of members brings down per capita consumption

“Utah has the lowest consumption… most likely attributed to 60% of residents being Mormons, who don’t consume any alcohol.” (FTFY)

Excluding that 60%, Utah’s average would be ~3.3 gallons per capita, which appears to be on-par with neighboring states.

As a non-Mormon person who lives in Utah, this is correct. There aren’t many of us but those of us who aren’t Mormon are pretty typical in these regards compared to our neighboring states

Before I saw the comments I was really concerned for New Hampshire

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First thing you see when you cross the MA->NH is the state liquor store. MA is the biggest proportion, but I know people in southern Maine who do it too. I’m sure some Vermonters do too

So the US alcohol capital Wisconsin was a lie the whole time

Eat, drink, and be merry

For tomorrow, you may be in Utah

Mainers head down to stock up on Alan’s coffee brandy. It’s a wicked bahgan.

It's complicated.

The state of NH sells hard liquor and wine directly through state liquor outlets. And there is no sales tax. Usually this results in lower prices but less variety for liquor compared to Massachusetts.

There is no sales tax on alcohol in MA, but there is a per-gallon excise tax. NH has so sales tax at all, but does charge an 8% "mark up fee" on private beer and wine sales. Private hard alcohol sales are forbidden. Because of the differing fee structures, whether MA or NH is cheaper varies on the price and volume of the product. Sticking apples to apples, I have found the Costco in MA sells wine cheaper than the same product in their NH store.

see my reply to the thread. Not both. It's not a clear answer.

New Hampshire drank 4.76 gallons of alcohol...more than double the goal set for the United States.

Who sets the national alcohol goals? Is there a committee, can I be on it?

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Looking at my 5 gallon water jug and thinking someone is drinking this much ethanol every year, livers are op man lol. Thank god i dont drink a lot

Lived in northern Massachusetts. Can attest this is what's going on. There's literally liquor stores all along the border set up to capture this market.

All of New England

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?

There’s just less alcohol in a miller lite…

Damn, even beer? In SC, you can’t buy liquor on Sundays, but you can consume it at a restaurant or other business. Beer and wine were fine.

I think…the goal should be 0.5 gallons. But yknow. Good luck

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It's messing up the scale and I hate it

I also feel like that can't be right

Also, it’s harder to buy alcohol in Utah because of restrictive sales practices. This (and a desire not to be seen buying alcohol in one’s community, creates an incentive to purchase out of state and bring it back, lowering in-state sales, the opposite of New Hampshire.

What’s the deal with mountain states having heavier alcohol consumption?

Live free and die - NH motto

(Yes I understand that the map uses sales and not consumption)

Okay now overlay this with the life expectancy map. Beer: it’s good for your health (Guinness)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/ypm7tt/county_wise_life_expectancy_in_usa_source_ghdx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Yeah. We match Wisconsin on most things.

18000 ml is 18 liters.

Florida is a lot lower than I expected.

What Utah giveth up, Nevada drinketh away

ups, yes. Vodka is 80 proof, 40% abv, so I meant 45 liters, not 60.

SNHU, UNH, and Dartmouth are really doing some heavy lifting here, huh?

The south is brewing up their own moonshine

Gallons per year is a very odd unit for reporting usage statistics.

Has to be more to it than that.

DE has no sales tax either and has has Philadelphia and Washington DC pretty close.

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.

>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.

You can’t buy beer on a Sunday? German beer riots used to be serious business btw: 20 people died in riots 1873 because beer prices were set to be raised in Frankfurt.

i life in germany and i can confirm this is exactly what germans are like

a gallon is 4 litres, or 8 pints more or less.

So that’s 32 pints a year, which is just over 1/2 a week.
That average must mean the vast majority of the US is virtually tea total.

Either this chart is utter, utter bullshit or I am completely misunderstanding it.

Oh well I hadn’t gone and actually read the chart haha. Maybe they’re counting children?