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Comment by CodingJeebus | Hacker News Reader

The average American drinks about 2.3 gallons of pure alcohol per year (in 2014), compared to 7.1 gallons per year in 1830, just as the temperance movement started to gain momentum.

America drank so much back then that the Federal Government was fully funded on liquor taxes, the first Federal income tax was not collected until prohibition took effect.

Not saying things are perfect now, but they used to be much, much worse. Highly recommend the Ken Burns Prohibition documentary for a deep dive.

[0]: https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/wi...

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US Prohibition was from 1920 to 1933. The Revenue Act of 1913 already put income tax into effect before that. And early 1900s import tariffs added up to more than the alcohol tax. But yes, we collected a lot from whiskey in the 1800s.

What is "pure alcohol" (the linked source refers to "absolute alcohol")?

Because I have trouble imagining the average American (or whatever person) drinking 2.3 gallons of ethanol in a year. A 4% beer is 0.5 fl oz of ethanol, which is 0.004 gallons. 2.3 gallons of ethanol would be more than 575 4% beers per year.

I definitely don't believe the 50% of Americans consume that much alcohol in a year. Supposedly 40% of people don't even drink alcohol, at all. The 7.1 gallon figure seems nonsensical too.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/03/10-facts-...

This source says 27 gallons of beer (or 297 beers) per year per capita, but I bet alcohol consumption is distributed such that 90% of consumption is by 10% of people, or even less.

For the top two deciles you have 15 and 74 drinks/week:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://w...

If we take oz of hard liquor, which is set at 40% alcohol, we get:

74 * 52 * .4 / 128 [oz/gallon] = 12.025 gallons of pure alcohol in a year

And:

15 * 52 * .4 / 128 = 2.44 gallons of pure alcohol

I think the folks who are really going hard pump the average (mean) up a lot.

Anecdotally, I know people that have a couple drinks after work each day. Two 5% beers x 5 days x 52 weeks is already 2.4gal of ethanol a year and that's not counting what they drink on the weekends. A friend's mother drinks like half a bottle of wine a night, that's 2.6gal/ year. Granted, most people don't drink like that but that's the kind of habitual drinking that most people probably wouldn't consider a drinking problem.

People that only drink socially and not to excess won't get close to 2.3gal a year but habitual drinkers and alcoholics will easily surpass that. I'm sure the median is a lot lower. Even just a fifth of liquor a week puts you at 4.8gal/year and real alcoholics are drinking a lot more than that.

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