Here’s an interesting list. Usually, we hear about the top drinking cities, but this is the top ten (or bottom ten, depending on your perspective) cities for NOT drinking, that is the cities and towns that don’t drink very much. I found the list in a U.S. News & World Report article but the data comes from the CDC (and is for communities of 10,000 or more people). The first four are pretty clear, but then it’s a four-way tie for fifth followed by a two-way tie.
- Provo-Orem, UT (99.4)
- Idaho Falls, ID (97.9)
- Hickory, NC (97.8)
- Ogden, UT (97.5)
- Brownsville, TX (97.2)
- Fayetteville, NC (97.2)
- Raleigh, NC (97.2)
- Wichita, KS (97.2)
- Cheyenne, WY (97.0)
- Farmington, NM (97.0)
Not many surprises from what you might guess, except that when you look deeper at the statistics, something odd emerges, at least to me. Those parenthetical numbers represent the percentage of people surveyed who said they don’t drink “more than two drinks per day” (if adult males) or “more than one drink per day” (if adult females). Otherwise — get this — they’re considered “heavy drinkers.” That’s right, have more than two drinks on the same day ever and you’re a heavy drinker. It’s hard to imagine a more useless way to define this, unless you’re trying to inflate the numbers and make it appear that problem drinking is more of a … well. problem, than it actually is. Defining heavy drinkers as “adult men having more than two drinks per day and adult women having more than one drink per day” undoubtedly accomplishes that, especially when you consider that the CDC defines binge drinkings as five or more drinks during one session (4 if you’re female). This is how to create a problem that doesn’t exist. (Note: I don’t mean that there aren’t problem drinkers, I only question that it’s as epidemic as these statistics suggest.) The way it is now, drink one or two beers a day, you’re fine. But have a third and you’re a “heavy drinker.” Have two more for a total of five and you’re — gasp — a “binge drinker.” Really?
Using the same data from the CDC survey, the top 10 heaviest drinking cities are:
- Reno, NV
- Palm Bay-Melbourne, FL
- Boulder, CO
- Austin, TX
- Charleston, SC
- McAllen, TX
- Naples-Marco Island, FL
- Riverside, CA
- Cape Coral, FL
- Barnstable Town, MA
That’s a strange list, too, and not what I would have predicted. Three in Florida and six total from the southern states. You just have to wonder how truthfully people answer a question like this when it’s posed.
I would be interesting to see how they reached those numbers. Raleigh is a college town with ~30K students. Even if NC State is a moderate-drinking campus that is enough to tip the statistics.
Brownsville and McAllen are 60 miles apart, with Brownsville located near South Padre. Hard to believe that they’d be that different.
Frankly, I’m really surprised to see three North Carolina towns on this list at all. All three of those towns have their own thriving breweries – Faytetteville has two and Raleigh has three with another soon to open (in addition to a couple of really great beer bars). On the other hand, NC also has a lot of urban spawl and a big commuting population.
Definition of “heavy drinker” aside, these seem like really weird results. I wonder exactly how this poll was conducted.
Any list of the top drinking cities that doesn’t include New Orleans, Milwaukee, or a city in northern California’s wine country is automatically suspect. dh brings up a good point, where are the college towns that are consistently rated as the top party schools?
One thing about the South is the wide gulf between what people do and what they’ll admit to doing. Do you know the difference between a Methodist and a Baptist? The Methodist will actually acknowledge you when you run into them at the liquor store.