Alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020 – killing more under-65 Americans than COVID

A new study revealed that alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020 from the previous year.

The study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that there was a 25.5% increase in alcohol-related deaths in 2020 from 2019. Between 1999 and 2019, the average annual increase in alcohol-related deaths was 3.6%.

The study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association discovered that more adults under the age of 65 died from alcohol-related factors (74,408) than from COVID-19 (74,075) in 2020. There were a total of 99,017 alcohol-related deaths, which accounted for 3% of all deaths in 2020.

"Research suggests that alcohol consumption and related harms increased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic," the authors of the study wrote. "Studies reported increases in drinking to cope with stress, transplants for alcohol-associated liver disease, and emergency department visits for alcohol withdrawal."

"The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed," study author Aaron White told the New York Times.

"Stress is the primary factor in relapse, and there is no question there was a big increase in self-reported stress, and big increases in anxiety and depression, and planet-wide uncertainty about what was coming next," White explained. "That’s a lot of pressure on people who are trying to maintain recovery."

The sale of alcohol was up to its highest level in 18 years, according to the International Wines and Spirits Record (IWSR). Alcohol consumption in the U.S. increased by 2% in 2020, the largest year-over-year increase since 2002, according to the IWSR's annual Drinks Market Analysis.

"In fact, the IWSR has predicted that by the end of the year, alcohol volume sales in the US will be up by 3.8% year on year, while value sales will be up by 5.5%," the Drinks Business reported.

Online alcohol sales more than quadrupled from $441 million in 2019 to an estimated $1.87 billion in 2022, according to analysts at RaboResearch.

As TheBlaze previously reported, the top killer of Americans aged 18-45 in 2020 and 2021 was fentanyl overdose. More Americans in that age range reportedly died from fentanyl overdoses than any other cause of death, including suicide, car accidents, cancer, and COVID-19.

Fentanyl fatalities have nearly doubled from 32,754 deaths in April 2019 to 64,178 deaths in April 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was analyzed by opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl.

The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics estimates that there were 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. between April 2020 and April 2021 – an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths during the same time period the year prior.