I was surprised by the top 2. I noticed very northern states are generally at the top. NY & NJ were actually below average. Utah without surprise drinks the least. I wonder what put New Hampshire so high?
I’m guessing those numbers are based on per-capita sales of alcohol and that New Hampshire and Delaware both have lower taxes than neighboring states. So the numbers are inflated by out-of-state buyers.
That’s what I was trying to determine as well, the methodology for collecting that data. Take any major highway into NH from any other state and the first thing you see is a liquor store. That’s no mistake. I have no doubt a substantial part of NH sales are out of state.
Very good guess.
NH is an alcohol tax-free state. Wyoming is the only other state.
Delaware doesn’t have a state sales tax and this apparently does encourage party planning to include purchasing in Delaware from nearby out of state people.
A 12 oz beer has about half an ounce of alcohol. So 4.67 gallons is the equivalent of over 1000 beers per person. If that seems absurdly high, see the discussion of no taxes on alcohol in New Hampshire and the impact it has on out of state purchases. Probably the actual consumption in New Hampshire is around 3. Still 600+ drinks per person per year, which is pretty impressive but not the kind out outlier the numbers suggest.
Other states with high amounts of tourism where there are lots of visitors drinking that are not counted in the denominator of this ratio are also higher on the list than they would otherwise be.
But generally it seems colder places have higher alcohol consumption.
Yeah, NH is a small state with giant cheap state liquor stores just across the border on every major highway. College kids in Boston drive to NH to stock up before throwing a party. So do a lot of adults.
If you add MA and NH you’d probably get a decent estimate of liquor consumption in the two combined. But these numbers are going to greatly overstate NH and somewhat understate higher-population MA.
I wonder about VT. Maybe some New Yorkers buy booze there?
I’d also like to see it controlled for drinkers vs. non-drinkers, if that would be possible.
I’m just thinking that a lot of the more conservative states are more all-or-nothing than somewhere like New Hampshire or Wisconsin. By that I mean that there’s a large population of religious tee-totalers in a lot of states, and they’re mostly offset by surprisingly heavy drinkers, so that the total per-capita consumption is nothing remarkable, but if you look at the people who actually drink, they really drink.
But yeah; I just feel like things such as say… Kansas’ large population of religious non-drinkers likely obscures the amount that the drinkers actually drink.
Similarly, the presence of New Orleans probably skews Louisiana’s numbers pretty dramatically in the opposite direction as well.
Vermont has a problem with “bootleggers” bringing in implausible amounts from New Hampshire (implausible for personal consumption), so I am guessing they are a net importer, even if some New Yorkers are buying from the Vermont ABC stores.
Cheap maybe compared to the states it borders. But I’ve been to New Hampshire and found their liquor prices ridiculous.
Then again I am from Wisconsin which has some of the lowest beer and liquor taxes in the country.
There is something screwy about the OP list. Frequently lists come out with the drunkest cities in America and many times the top 9 or 10 are in Wisconsin, The Drunkest Place On Earth! ™
I noticed that, as well. I’ve seen many of those lists over the past few years (usually based on incidence of binge drinking, and/or alcohol sales), and the fact that Wisconsin is “only” #8 on this particular list does feel off.
Liquor in little NH is far cheaper than in much larger MA, and a large fraction of the liquor consumed in MA was purchased in NH.
I’ve socialized in both NH and WI, and people drink a lot more in WI. The NH numbers are skewed due to differential taxes and nearby population centers.
I too was surprised to see so many southern states so far down the list. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of non-drinkers, occasional drinkers (<1 drink per month or so), moderate drinkers (<4 drinks per week, perhaps?) and maybe one more divide between heavy-ish drinkers and oh-my-god-you-really-drink-that-much? drinkers.
I would’ve thought California would be higher on the list. We aren’t luring in out-of-staters with our low taxes, but we get plenty of tourism, and we have lots of wineries.