A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 99,000 people died in 2020 of alcohol-related causes — a 26-percent increase from the previous, pre-pandemic year.
. Now a study has found that alcohol-related deaths in the United States climbed nearly 26 percent in 2020 — the largest year-over-year increase in decades, researchers say., found that more than 99,000 people died in 2020 of alcohol-related causes ranging from alcohol-associated liver diseases to mental and behavioral disorders to drug overdoses involving alcohol.
Before the pandemic, White said, researchers with the NIAAA had been seeing an increase of about 3 percent per year in alcohol-related fatalities. In 2020 — when the coronavirus spread around the globe — that increase jumped to nearly 26 percent, he said.“The most significant finding is just the sheer size of the increase and how abruptly it happened,” he said.
An estimated 29,500 deaths in 2020 were linked to alcohol-associated liver diseases, such as cirrhosis; more than 15,000 to alcohol-related mental and behavioral disorders; and nearly 12,000 to opioid overdose deaths involving alcohol — a more than 40 percent increase from the previous year, according to the research.
One example of this, he said, is alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation