Alcohol Deaths Way Up in Wisconsin

Tuesday, January 25th, 2022 -- 9:01 AM

(Bob Hague, WRN) A recently released report has found that deaths due to alcohol are way up in Wisconsin.

Mark Sommerhauser is a policy researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum. “I do want to put this in the proper context, it’s not just Wisconsin. This is something that’s been happening nationally. We’re just one of 50 states, we’re part of a national trend. But I think within that we need to acknowledge that this issue is worse in Wisconsin.”

Sommerhauser continued, “Middle-aged, older people who are dying as a consequence typically more of many years or decades of heavy alcohol use and abuse. That can translate to things such as liver disease and other types of deaths are related to alcohol abuse. So that’s really kind of the lion’s share of these deaths, is things like that.”

Sommerhauser says that does not include deaths in which alcohol was a contributing factor. “A car accident or a fall, or violence of some kind either to oneself or another person. All these types of deaths that unfortunately we know alcohol can sometimes play a role that are not included here, and are a whole other subset that we did not actually look at for this report.”

The study found that alcohol-related deaths in the state jumped from 865 in 2019, to 1077 in 2020, a more than 24 percent increase following a gradual, decades long upward trend.  The majority of the deaths were among middle-aged and older Wisconsinites.

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