The Pandemic Drinking Binge Just Keeps Going
Americans are consuming a lot more alcohol than before Covid-19 arrived, and the collateral damage is rising.
A step in the wrong direction.
Photographer: George Rose/Getty Images North AmericaThe arrival of Covid-19 and the societal disruptions that accompanied it understandably drove a lot of Americans to drink. But even as life has returned to more or less normal this year, the drinking binge has continued — which isn’t great news for anybody other than the makers and sellers of alcoholic beverages.
The consumer spending statistics compiled by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis are the timeliest estimates of alcohol consumption available. They show November’s spending on alcoholic beverages, adjusted for inflation and seasonal spending patterns, to have been 3% higher than a year earlier and 15% higher than just before the pandemic.1