I've long thought New York was the drunkest place in the country, in part because most of my evenings in the city, particularly in the winter, are spent holed up at a happy hour until I remember I need to be able to make it to the subway somehow. But it turns out the Empire State imbibes far less than some of its counterparts elsewhere in the U.S., per a new study ranking the states that drink the most alcohol in the U.S.
As reported by USA Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regularly compiles data on Americans' alcohol consumption, including data on those who die in alcohol-related driving incidents; data on adults who binge drink; and data on adult Americans' general health. 24/7 Wall St. mined that data to make a list of the drunkest states in the country. Researchers discovered that, for the most part, states with the highest drinking rates were concentrated in the Midwest, while the states with the lowest drinking rates (#50 Tennessee, #47 Alabama, #46 Mississippi) were primarily located in the South, though West Virginia (#49) and Utah (#48) bucked that trend a bit. Researchers did find a correlation between income and drinking, noting that areas with higher average incomes tended to have heavier drinkers; they also noted that heavy drinking areas tended to have higher rates of alcohol-related automobile incidents, which, you know makes sense.
Despite my observational belief that New York is a binge-drinker's paradise, my fair state only ranked 20th on the list, with only 23 percent of road fatalities involving alcohol (likely because the state's most populous area also has the best public transportation in the country). But here are the top ten: