February 5, 2010

America's Drunkest Cities

From USAToday:
Fresno, Calif. tops Men's Health magazine's list of America's "drunkest" cities while Boston, home to the "Cheers" bar where everyone knows your name, was deemed the "least drunk," besting even Salt Lake City.

I've been lied to by my Dropkick Murphys albums.

The magazine, which will publish the list of 100 major cities in it's March edition, drew upon such data as death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past month, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties.

"Drunkest" cities:

  1. Fresno, Calif.
  2. Reno, Nev.
  3. Billings, Mont.
  4. Riverside, Calif.
  5. Austin
  6. St. Louis
  7. San Antonio
  8. Lubbock, Texas
  9. Tucson
  10. Bakersfield, Calif.

"Least drunk" cities:

  1. Boston
  2. Yonkers, N.Y.
  3. Rochester, N.Y.
  4. Salt Lake City
  5. Miami
  6. Newark
  7. Durham, N.C.
  8. New York City
  9. Fort Wayne, Ind.
  10. Manchester, N.H.
See full list, including grades for each city from A to F.

Maybe somebody should pitch NBC on doing a new version of "Cheers" set in Fresno? With the track record of fine profit-making judgment that NBC's current management has, they might go for it...

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

75 comments:

Richard Hoste said...

8 out of 10 of the drunkest are in Sand States. Another Sailer theory is born.

Anonymous said...

The western cities with no public transit are of course going to fare worse in crashes, DUIs, etc. Columbia, #13, was the first one east of the Mississippi.

SF said...

At first glance, looks like a weak but possibly significant correlation with %NAM population. It looks like something you could crunch some numbers on.

Anonymous said...

My nephew plays for the Fresno Monsters junior hockey team and from what I've heard this is completely believable. I'm travelling from D+ Omaha to a playoff game at the end of the month and I can't wait to witness and participate in this booze fest. A votre sante.

Anonymous said...

Which "Durham, NC" are we talking about?

The "Durham, NC" which hosts Duke University [and its infamous Lacrosse Team], or the "Durham, NC" which spawned the two animals who butchered Eve Carson?

The Komment Kontrol Dork said...

Hey, twoof - for the record - I know pwn this name.

Thx!

Steve Sailer said...

Good point about mass transit reducing drunk driving arrests.

John Smyth said...

"At first glance, looks like a weak but possibly significant correlation with %NAM population. It looks like something you could crunch some numbers on."

In which way? It seems like the most drunk ones generally have a lot of Mexicans, while the least drunk ones have a lot of non-Mexican NAMs (NYC, Miami, Newark, Boston, etc)

RandyB said...

Looks like there's a correlation with gender ratio.

I know drinking was Plan B in my single days.

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Sailer,

Visitors come here to have their beliefs about white-superiority, and white-aggrievement confirmed and enhanced.

They don't want articles about Drunkenness, we want to hear about how the USA is unfair to white people.

Anonymous said...

One other factor besides public transit that corresponds to lower DUI arrests is that large cities have less roadblocks.

For example, Philadelphia police have their hands full with homicides most weekend nights and do not have the resources to man sobriety checkpoints. However, if you drink in Philly and drive home to your leafy suburb, be prepared to be stopped by the local cops.

Steve Sailer said...

"Roadblocks"

Yeah, I can't recall ever being stopped by a roadblock looking for drunk drivers in a lifetime of driving in Chicago and LA. The CPD and LAPD must generally have other things on their minds.

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"At first glance, looks like a weak but possibly significant correlation with %NAM population."

Billings, MT is the nearest city (50 miles) to the Crow Indian Reservation. Alcoholism is a serious issue on the reservation.

David Davenport said...

I notice that the old Confederate states, where there isn't much mass transit, are not very drunk.

And neither is Boston? I don't get it.

Lubbock, TX isn't a big place.

Durham, N. C. is the location of Dook U. and just down the road from U.N.C. and slum areas of historically oppressed peoples.

Christopher said...

Mass transit?! How about transit itself. In NYC one can _roll_ home. At 4:30 a.m.
Case f-ing closed.

travis said...

The western cities with no public transit are of course going to fare worse in crashes, DUIs, etc. Columbia, #13, was the first one east of the Mississippi.

Columbia is basically dominated by three entities:

1) A major state university
2) An enormous military base
3) The State Legislature

If there are three more hard drinking groups of people than college students (and professors!), The Army and politicians and their staffs, I don't know who they would be. I'm surprised the rank isn't higher.

jody said...

so basically, it's usually places where lots of mestizos live.
the article even has a photo of a drunk mestizo.

anybody who has lived around lots of them, did not need this list to know that they get drunk, get in their cars, and hit people.

this is part of how they make america a more dangerous place, even without factoring in the higher crime rate.

Anonymous said...

I notice that the old Confederate states, where there isn't much mass transit, are not very drunk.

Might be attributable to the large numbers of non-drinking Christians.

I'm surprised that Las Vegas isn't on the top of the list.

Peter

Deeply Offended said...

"Visitors come here to have their beliefs about white-superiority, and white-aggrievement confirmed and enhanced."

The fact that you use don't use an upper case "W" when describing Euro-Americans as White is just another slap in the face! Stop the hate!

keypusher said...

Durham, N. C. is the location of Dook U. and just down the road from U.N.C. and slum areas of historically oppressed peoples.

For people who don't like the term NAMs (perhaps on account of PTSD), HOPs looks like a brilliant alternative.

Anonymous said...

I am calling bullshit on this.

Alaska has to have the drunkest cities. Anywhere near a rez will have that problem.

They simply did not want to say Indians are more likely to get drunk and stay drunk.

Jeff said...

Steve,
I've been stopped twice at checkpoints, without having spent a lot of time in LA. It must be when you are out.

Anonymous said...

Native Americans have had a hard time with alcohol. Mexicans in America might begin to have a hard time with it as they begin to earn enough money to really indulge in it. Their genes haven't been exposed to liquor for as long as white or black genes have, and thus they might find themselves more prone to falling into alcoholism because of this. Alcohol has been used in the near east for a very long time.


Ive always wondered why 100% PGA cannot be gelatinized in a capsule form (like a Robitussin Gel-cap) and used in that form. One capsule could equate with roughly the amount of booze in two beers. You could pop a couple and be buzzed in minutes while you sipped that diet coke. We use other drugs in pill form to get pain relief, get high, whatever.........but not alcohol. I wonder why?

Anonymous said...

The Irish can hold their drink.

Anonymous said...

Chicago is only #85? Come on, we've got whole neighborhoods dedicated to drinking. The fix must be in.

Anonymous said...

Why is this list from a few years ago completely different? http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/22/nightlife-cities-drunk_cx_de_nightlife06_0822intro.html It includes Boston in the top five.

Ed said...

I've lived in St. Louis and I've lived in New York. You guys are overanalyzing this.

People in St. Louis go out more often, and get drunker, than people in New York. No question. And people in St. Louis go out to bars and try to drive back home (mass transit there pretty much shuts down fifteen minutes before the bars close),no problem, that is genuinely accepted.

People in New York tend to have jobs where they really can't afford to walk in drunk/ hungover, even though they usually get to work about an hour after the midwesterners (the commute really doesn't allow people in New York to get to work at 8:30 in the morning, even though people in the NY area often wake up earlier than people in the Midwest).

This is mostly an issue of culture and what is accepted, and what people have to live for other than going out and boozing it up, and partly the dreaded mass transit options thing. But its not really that complicated.

John Seiler said...

It's understandable that 3 inland California cities are at the top, or near it: So close to the beach, but still so far away.

kudzu bob said...

My curiosity about the War Nerd's putative hometown aroused, I checked the Urban Dictionary and found these paragraphs about bibulous Fresno:

"Absolutely, the shittiest city, no, town on the face of the entire fucking planet. A waste of air. More fucking idiots and inbred retards per capita than backstage at a Maury Povich 'I am 1,000% sure him is the daddy' Special. A complete drain on society and the international hub of derelict underachievers.

"However, it is an excellent place to go if you currently hate where you live as you will most assuredly come to appreciate what you had. You could be getting gang raped in the shower of a prison for the mentally ill on a daily basis and one minute in Fresno would make you yearn for soap bar filled sock lashings at the hands of three toothed retards."

LomaAlta said...

The drunk cities are mostly in illegal alien land.

Anonymous said...

Mexicans much?

Anonymous said...

Let's see, Boston, home to 80-odd colleges and universities within a 30-mile radius, doesn't drink? Every September about 250,000 people between 18 and 22 arrive in Boston; BU, BC, MIT, Harvard and Northeastern are about 125,000 by themselves. Those 5 schools all lie within a 10-mile radius. Still think there's no drinking going on?

I just rolled in from dinner and cocktails with the girlfriend in town: a Hendricks martini (dry, 3 olives), 3 Harpoon IPAs and a Taylor tawny port for me and 2 chocolate martinis for her. Then back to my hometown 8 miles north of Boston for dessert: a Zinfandel and a Laphroaig double for me and another 1 1/2 martinis for her (impressive for a 125 lb. woman). All the while surrounded by people enjoying the fruits of the vine and various barley waters right along with us.

For those who've never visited the Hub, it's probably the smallest major city in America areawise (not even in the top 150 according to Wikipedia). Its 48 square miles make it half the size of Brooklyn! The downtown from the waterfront to the Allston/Brighton neighborhood is about a $15 cab ride. It's also pretty well covered by subway and bus. The cops are pretty forgiving, as most of them are drunks themselves. In my youth, an old school Irish MDC cop gave my buddies and I gum to chew to hide the beer breath before the local cops arrived when we were rear-ended in Quincy! And yes, we can hold our drink because we DO drink!

Mr. Smythe, the Asians drink like fish; like the rest of us in Boston, they aren't frickin' idiots about it. In the downtown area, you really don't see many NAMs in the restaurants and bars, which may keep the road carnage to a minimum.

But as I've mentioned, the cops aren't jerks either. I visit Tampa fairly regularly to visit the parents, and the Nazi a$$holes there have pulled me over 3 times in the last 10 years and my ex-wife twice just for giggles; no citations issued because there was no reason for the stop in the first palce other than out of state plates!

Hmmm, 1:30 in the morning and the grammar and punctuation are pretty good. I must need another drink!

Brutus

Colleen said...

Anonymous said: "The Irish can hold their drink."

Sure it's easy to do that when you're layin' under the table. ;-)

Christopher said...
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Christopher said...
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l said...

Maybe in the other cities alcohol is not the drug of choice. What's the meth, coke/crack, heroin, etc. use in these towns?

Sternhammer said...

I agree with anonymous, the set-up of the questions hides Boston's particular type of drunkenness. All those college kids are too young to get liver problems, and almost none of them drive. It is very expensive to have a car here, and mostly you can get around without it. They drink a lot, but I guess I don't know the comparison point -- maybe FSU students are even drunker.

virgil xenophon said...

I call total BS also. New Orleans is not even listed, let alone#1! In a city where bars are open 24hrs/day, carrying drinks on the street is legal, they have drive-thru daquari shops, children are allowed in bars, "Go-cups" (taking drinks with you when leaving a bar) are legal and situated in that part of the state where it is not uncommon to see clubs full of party-goers drinking and dancing at 8am on Sat morning and we're NOT#1???? And did I forget Mardis Gras? (A month-long celebration beginning on 12th night and ending on Fat Tuesday) Bastille Day? Or a thousand and one other local celebrations year-round unique to New Orleans? Two weeks worth of Jazzfest? Puuleeeeeze!!!!!

Eric Rasmusen said...

This looks like an imitation of the much more plausible "Gayest Cities in America" at

http://advocate.com/printArticle.aspx?id=105023

That article gives rankings on specific criteria, which allows the reader to improve on their index if he wants.

The Drunk index includes:

"death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past month, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties."

As commentors have noted, this basically measures which cities have the most car driving. Or, the strongest enforcement of laws against Drunks. Using just "death rates from alcoholic liver disease" would be much better, though it would be even better to use it per number of old people (or Florida will look very drunken).

Jack said...

Colleen we can take that one of two ways...

albertosaurus said...

There is a secret truth about alcohol that is analogous to the secret truth about minority IQs.

Many of the mysteries surrounding blacks behavior and black culture disappear when you realize that blacks have lower levels of general intelligence. If you believe the contra factual egalitarianism proclaimed by the media and popular culture you can't make much sense out of America or Haiti.

Similarly there is a hidden truth about alcohol that explains a lot. Alcohol consumption is good for you, good for your health.

Alcohol consumption in fact is just about the best thing you can do to avoid heart disease and of course, heart disease is the most dangerous killer.

Your doctor probably won't tell you this. You see the relationship between drink and disease is not linear. It is "U" shaped. High amounts of booze is very bad for you but so is no booze at all. Moderate drinking is very, very good for your heart. Two drinks a day is better for your heart health than just about any drug your doctor can prescribe.

The problem is that alcohol is hard to drink in moderation. Moderate drinking soon develops into immoderate drinking and there is no question that binge or heavy drinking is a killer.

A century or so ago the public drank much more heavily than it does today. This was the era of "demon rum". There was probably also a great deal of over indulgence throughout the middle ages. But before the invention of distillation the classical world used wine as a means to kill bacteria in the drinking water. Romans drank watered wine all day, every day. They were healthier because of this practice.

Recently the media have hit upon Reservatrol as miracle natural remedy. Reservatrol is found in red wine among other food stuffs and it is well established that red wine is "heart healthy". Of course so is white wine, beer and booze. It's the alcohol that does you the good, not the Reservatrol.

Teetotalers have lower life expectancies than social drinkers. This is not controversial or new. There have been very large studies for more than a half century that have shown this to be true. The medical profession has long known this - but they just haven't told you.

Anonymous said...

Sailer-bate:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/at-top-city-schools-lack-of-diversity-persist/

Anonymous said...

Steve, I thought you and your colleagues would be interested to hear that there was a question about Virginia Dare on Jeopardy last night.

Anonymous said...

Interesting geographical distribution. I'd guess it's down to the north-east having an older population compared to the south and west.

Anonymous said...

Isn't Boston full of drunken Irish?

SGOTI said...

Surprising that many other Southern cities didn't measure up (besides Columbia, SC- stuck there in the summer GUARANTEES you'll be driven to drink). It must be the latent Baptist influence or something.

Except for the coastal cities- they're naturally bigger party towns. In Charleston they ask you who your grandmother was; in Savannah they ask you what you want to drink.

Svigor said...

Not as big a deal as the Amerinds, but Nords don't handle alcohol as well as Meds.

josh said...

re "Colleen":The only people Ive ever seen laying under a table were those punched out by an Irishman.

Anonymous said...

Dropkick Murphy's. Excellent taste Steve!

One wonders, if the study is sound, if that guy only gets kissed when they're on the road...

Anonymous said...

Teetotalers have lower life expectancies than social drinkers. This is not controversial or new. There have been very large studies for more than a half century that have shown this to be true.

Could that result, at least in part, from people with serious medical problems who have to abstain from alcohol?

Peter

Jay Fink said...

Fresno has roadblocks everywhere. The police even put GPS systems in drunk drivers cars to be able to track them. I believe the ACLU has been fighting this. Drunk driving seems to be the #1 focus of the Fresno police department and that's probably why Fresno ends up on top of this list.

I have lived in Fresno. I have also lived in Wisconsin. The cheeseheads are without a doubt much heavier drinkers despite what this survey says. In fact if you look at the CDCs BRFSS survey the upper Midwest does have the most binge drinking in the U.S.

read it said...

Seems like those with less drinking have older populations.

Dutch Boy said...

Possible explanation: Lots of Mexicans and crackers in the SJ Valley. They like to get bombed and no way are they taking public transportation!

sj071 said...

Sorry Steve, very weak. Populist piece, filler, no brains, etc. -6.

sj071 said...

O/T....cross pollination from "Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Teacher from Canada Chimes in on the "Bankrupt Education System"

Joe-dfw:
'I was born and educated in China. We never had problem with class size. Class room size ranged from 33 to 48 in all my years in school. The school honored students who did well in courses, and students competed with each other hard. Special class in my school was for top students, a highest honor and competition was on another level. Most studetns did not join sports team, which was a waste of time. A Chinese high school graduate can easily pass GRE math part.

Yes I agree, No-Child-lef-behind means All-Child-left-Behind. Look at California school system since 70s, one can see how California schools drop from top in the nation to the bottom in the nation. Compitition is good, and you've got to let some fail, either business, or education, or public service.
More ▼Like this comment? [yes] [no] (Score: 16 by 16 votes)

Melykin said...

Svigor wrote:
Not as big a deal as the Amerinds, but Nords don't handle alcohol as well as Meds.

Scots and Irish don't handle alcohol as well as Meds either. Maybe people on the northern fringes of Europe are more recently descended from hunter/gatherers than people in southern Europe. Once people started farming and started making substantial amounts of alcohol, alcoholism would have been selected against by evolution.

The aboriginal people of the arctic (in Canada, Russia and Greenland), some of the aboriginals further south in North America, Australia, and the Bushmen (San people) in Africa were all hunter/gatherers until very recently. All these people have a very high prevalence of alcoholism. There is also a great deal of alcoholism in Mongolia, where traditionally the people were were nomadic herders who did not raise crops.

I'm really tired of the way alcoholism in these recent non-crop-growing peoples is usually blamed on vague, hand-wavy psychological problems brought on by the racism of evil European colonists. There is absolutely no science behind these claims.

Why did people in the middle east, south Asia and East Asia NOT become alcoholics when they were colonized by racist Europeans? I think it is because these people had been drinking alcohol for thousands of years and most the the population prone to abuse alcohol had already been weeded out.

Some scientists believe that alcoholism is up 70% genetic. Your tendency towards alcoholism probably has to do with the way your body metabolises alcohol. It has little (if anything) to do with all that psychological crap. But then not so long ago they blamed schizophrenia and autism on cold mothers or some damn thing--until Bruno Bettelheim was exposed as a liar and a fraud.
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9706/articles/finn.html

People who get drunk very easily are less likely to become alcoholic than the person who can drink everyone else under the table, according to this guy, who has studied alcoholism in twins for many years:
http://abc.gov.au/quantum/poison/alcohol/nick.htm

It really pisses me off that we can't talk about alcoholism in regard to race with out being called a nazi. It is clear some races suffer much more than others from alcoholism, but there are none so blind as those who will not see, I suppose. And anyone who claims that alcoholism is caused by your parents and grandparents being in a residential school (as Canadian aboriginal claim), please show me the evidence.

My father was an alcoholic. His parents were from Caithness in the far north of Scotland. Maybe if we could get over our squeamishness with regards to genetics, race, and alcoholism, an effective treatment or prevention for this terrible disease might be found.

Truth said...

"so basically, it's usually places where lots of mestizos live.
the article even has a photo of a drunk mestizo"

Wrong David Duke; Billings Mt is 95% white, Reno has a Mestizo population of 18% and St. Louis 4%.

"Hey, twoof - for the record - I know pwn this name."

Glad to be of service wherever I can, Bro.

"Not as big a deal as the Amerinds, but Nords don't handle alcohol as well as Meds."

I've always thought it was the other way around. The hollow leg guys I've met in my life have almost all Been Northern Europeans.

William said...

I'm surprised that Las Vegas isn't on the top of the list.

The survey structure wouldn't capture the Vegas scene well. The majority of the really sauced people in Vegas on a given night are likely from out of town. They either walk the strip, take cabs, or stumble upstairs to their rooms at the end of the night rather than drive drunk. Habitual offenders would hit their hometown's statistics for binge drinking and liver disease, not Vegas's.

Anonymous said...

I once knew a guy who was half Irish and half Native American. He told me that as far as booze was concerned he felt he was doomed from the very start, condemned to a life of alcohol abuse. However, he managed to thwart his fate by staying away from John Barleycorn, proving biology is not necessarily destiny. However, he seemed to like gambling a bit too much for his own good.

Reg Cæsar said...

Interesting that Irish St Paul is marginally soberer than Nordic Minneapolis. But the former also has many more Jews (and fewer aboriginals), and a bunch of snooty little private colleges rather than the state mega-U, factors that would depress drunkenness per these or any other criteria.

Also more prevalent in St Paul are the "locals", whence you can simply wobble home, never mind the bus. The Mpls bars tend to concentrate in a few hot spots. But the city's new "Lite rail" should at least get the drinker past the city limits, to the park-and-ride, after which his DUI will be registered on a suburban blotter.

There is also a great deal of alcoholism in Mongolia... --Melykin

The most powerful stuff I've ever drunk was something called Mongolian Wheat Spirit Product, which I recklessly alternated with sahti, a traditional Finnish home brew. By three a.m. you could have performed surgery on me. Yet five hours later, I woke with a clear head and went right to work.

One of them was the antidote for the other, but which?

shoutrts said...

My father was an alcoholic. His parents were from Caithness in the far north of Scotland. Maybe if we could get over our squeamishness with regards to genetics, race, and alcoholism, an effective treatment or prevention for this terrible disease might be found.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It really sucks to have an alki pa.

Dubya 43 said...

an effective treatment or prevention for this terrible disease

We call it, "Temperance".

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"Wrong David Duke; Billings Mt is 95% white"

Truth, your overblown opinion of your own knowledgeability has caused you to expose yourself again.

I know Billings. Got relatives there. Yeah, it's Whites who own houses there, but once again, Billings is 50 miles from the Crow Indian reservation. What? You don't think Indians drive cars?
(Although, I'm not sure the wrecks they drive can be reasonably called cars.)

PLENTY of drunken Indians rumblin' down 1-90 back to the res at 2:30 in the morning when the Billings bars close.

THAT's the reason Billings ranks so high on "drunken cities." Riverton, WY has an even bigger drunken Indian problem, but since it's a small town, not a city, it didn't make the list.

Anonymous said...

Two things:

Are these numbers for metropolitan areas or just for the central cities? If the latter, then they're useless. "Boston" is not just the small city on the Charles with half a million people, most of whom can walk to a bar (and stagger home). It's a sprawling region with 5+ million people, most of whom have to drive everywhere because of the limited amount of public transportation in suburban areas, even in relatively well-served Boston. If you really want to understand the drinking habits of a city, you have to consider its suburbs as well because the culture - which is what you're really asking about - will be the same; and transpo/DUI enforcement will tend to even out across multiple municipalities.

Secondly, if I lived in Fresno - which sounds like a fate worse than death - I would be pretty damn mad. Not because some idiot survey named my city as the drunkest but rather because it got there by have the most rigorous DUI enforcement. I take it that the city is such a crime-free paradise that the police can spend all their time enforcing the will of the rod-up-the-ass New Puritans.

Anonymous said...

Reading the comments it seems to me there are just too many variables we don't know about to draw any solid conclusions.

What is meant by city, urban/suburban, jusrisdiction etc.

Police activity or lack of.

Public transport or lack of.

And so on.

Anonymous said...

albertosaurus said...

Similarly there is a hidden truth about alcohol that explains a lot. Alcohol consumption is good for you, good for your health.

Just like marijuana.

Alcohol consumption in fact is just about the best thing you can do to avoid heart disease and of course, heart disease is the most dangerous killer.

That, and cancer - which moderate alcohol (esp. wine) drinking also helps prevent.

Your doctor probably won't tell you this

Or your clergyperson, either.

Robert said...

If you live west of the Mississippi you are more likely to be drunk.

Unknown said...

Police in Boston are extremely lenient about drunk driving. There is also good mass transit. The idea that Boston, with it's ethnic and age distribution is one of least hard drinking cities in America is preposterous.

Anonymous said...

Any stats on the highest cities, dude?

Truth said...

"I know Billings. Got relatives there. Yeah, it's Whites who own houses there, but once again, Billings is 50 miles from the Crow Indian reservation. What? You don't think Indians drive cars?"

According to Wikipedia, Billings, MT is 3.4% Indian, of a total population of 103,000. The Crow reservation is 50 miles away and has population of 7,900 living on the reservation, so you decide, is it the 95,000 rough-hewn white cowboys/ranchers/wildcatters/miners living in an icebox who are to blame, or the 10,000 Indians, most of whom live an hour away?

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"so you decide, is it the 95,000 rough-hewn white cowboys/ranchers/wildcatters/miners living in an icebox who are to blame, or the 10,000 Indians, most of whom live an hour away?"

Well, as I said, driving east (from Billings towards the res) down 1-90 in the wee hours (as I'm returning home from visiting relatives) it is plain to see which demographic is doing the weaving. And the weavers, to my great relief, exit the freeway at the reservation.

Personal experience trumps ideologic race-realism-denial every time.

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

Statistic from this article:
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF1301/Clawson/Clawson.html
Beating Alcohol Through Tribal Self-Help

"Today, the drug and alcohol-related mortality rate for Indians in Montana and Wyoming is 11 times the national average. Figures for other states with sizable Indian populations are nearly as grim."


"Given a choice in 1953, less than one third of the Indian reservations voted wet. Those that remained dry included the Navaho, and other large reservations. More than 80 percent of all Indians on reservations would continue to live where liquor sale was prohibited. Those with drinking problems would be highly visible in the skidrow sections of mostly white cities. Drunken drivers would bloody the highways between dry reservations and border town bars. Car wrecks and cirrhosis of the liver would kill Indians at 4.4 times the national average. After an initial flurry of local option elections, most tribes left liquor control and policy to state governments"



Note: Crow Indian Reservation is dry, therefore the Indians drive to Hardin or Billings for liquor. (But would be treated for cirrhosis or trauma from a drunk-driving crash at Billings hospital, therefore driving up Billings' alcohol-related death rates.)

sparky sport said...

"Not as big a deal as the Amerinds, but Nords don't handle alcohol as well as Meds."

I've always thought it was the other way around. The hollow leg guys I've met in my life have almost all Been Northern Europeans.


Truth gets it right for once. Melykin is correct: "People who get drunk very easily are less likely to become alcoholic than the person who can drink everyone else under the table."

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"so you decide, is it the 95,000 rough-hewn white cowboys/ranchers/wildcatters/miners living in an icebox"

Icebox, schmicebox. The Old West image of a cowboy astride a horse sitting a herd in a blizzard, where his very survival depended upon a swig of gut-warming whiskey from a hip flask, is as Gone With the Wind as the Antebellum South. Today's rancher tools around in a heated ATV with a plastic weather covering or a pickup. Natural gas-fired heaters do a nice job warming things up on the drilling rigs. Clothing is much improved, too.

The biggest substance abuse problem for Whites in Montana is meth -- which they're getting a handle on. http://www.montanameth.org/News_Events/publications.php

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"sparky sport said...
"Not as big a deal as the Amerinds, but Nords don't handle alcohol as well as Meds."

I've always thought it was the other way around. The hollow leg guys I've met in my life have almost all Been Northern Europeans.

Truth gets it right for once. Melykin is correct: "People who get drunk very easily are less likely to become alcoholic than the person who can drink everyone else under the table."

Hooey. Northern Euros are not hollow-legged alcoholics.



The Finns have recently started drinking a lot more -- and catching up with alcoholism rates of the rest of the EU (includingin Med countries) -- and getting cirrhosis.

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finland+has+highest+rate+of+cirrhosis+of+the+liver+in+Nordic+Countries/1076152945336

quote:

Finland has highest rate of cirrhosis of the liver in Nordic Countries
Sixfold rise in alcohol consumption since 1960s


The annual death rate from cirrhosis of the liver is now six times higher in Finland than in the 1960s. The increase in the disease runs parallel with that in the consumption of alcohol. The occurrence of cirrhosis in Finland is at about the average rate for the European Union, and far above the average for the Nordic Countries.
In just over 30 years, alcohol consumption in Finland has doubled among men, and quintupled among women.


******So the take-away point is: The Nordic countries have a much lower rate of alcohol consumption (with resultant cirrhosis) than EU average as a whole, (including Med Countries)


Nope. I'm right. The 11-fold higher rate of alcoholism / alcohol-related death and disability of the Crow Indians, coming in off the res, is the reason Billings is Number 3 on list.