America’s Drinking Problem

A recent article in Atlantic Magazine is titled, “America has a drinking problem.” Those five words at the top of Kate Julian’s overview of our nation’s drinking culture and habits should cause us to wake up and pay attention. Among other things, Julian tells us that between 1997 and 2017, the number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Sates doubled, to more than seventy-thousand a year. Alcohol is now one of the leading drivers of the decrease in life expectancy. Julian notes that these numbers are sure to increase as a result of the pandemic, as during the pandemic the frequency of drinking rose, along with sales of hard liquor. Nearly a quarter of Americans said they’d been drinking more over the past year as a strategy for coping with their stress. We should be concerned about these trends. As Christian parents, our role is lead our kids, by example and by our words, into learning that our culture glorifies and worships alcohol use, and that drunkenness is wrong.