Fargo Ranked As Second Drunkest City In America

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Written By:
Rob Port

Dec 29, 2010
2:39pm

Here’s the full list, courtesy of The Daily Beast:

1. Milwaukee, WI
2. Fargo, ND
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Austin, TX
5. Reno, NV
6. Burlington, VT
7. Omaha, NE
8. Boston, MA
9. Anchorage, AK
10. San Diego, CA

My first reaction? Clearly Fargo isn’t trying hard enough.

Here’s how they came up with it:

To compile our first annual list of the drunkest cities in America, we looked at three things: average alcohol consumption over a month, the highest levels of binge drinking, and the places where large portions of the population suffer the dire health consequences from over-imbibing.

For the average drinks per month, we turned to Experian Simmons, which provided the average number of alcoholic drinks consumed per person in a typical month in more than 200 metropolitan areas. We also used 2009 statistics on the percentage of the adult population for each metro area that are heavy and binge drinkers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Lastly, we calculated the deaths from alcoholic liver disease for each city from the most recent statistics published by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

According to the article, the average number of alcoholic drinks per person, per month consumed in Fargo is 12.48. The percent of adults who are heavy drinkers is 8.1%, the percent of adults who are binge drinkers is 21.8% and deaths per 100,000 residents from alcoholic liver disease is 3.5.

All numbers to put the nanny statists/neo-prohibitionists into a tizzy, but these are personal health issues. And I question some of the criteria. Like “binge drinking,” for instance. Anyone who has ever gone to a Christmas party and drank as many as five beers is a “binge drinker” even if they only do so once a year.

And besides, public policy should only be concerned with public safety, and that means drunk driving.

I did some quick searching for drunk driving statistics for Fargo, but all I can find are drunk driving arrests which are a fairly poor metric. After all, a spike in arrests doesn’t necessarily mean more drunk drivers. It could just mean more enforcement, or changes in the laws that define what is and is not driving under the influence.

Regardless, people are going to drink if they want to drink. Especially those living in colder climates where the outdoors is rather inhospitable for several months out of the year.

Some will drink responsibly and others won’t.