Alcohol

Why it matters: Excessive and binge drinking can cause long-lasting health problems that impact our community's heath, wellbeing, and economy. Additionally, under-age drinking behaviors are associated with adult drinking behaviors, and has been shown to cause school problems (such as higher rates of absences, lower grades, and fighting), disruption of normal growth and sexual development, physical and sexual violence, increased risk of suicide and homicide, memory problems, car accidents, and other problems. At a community level, excessive and binge drinking contributes to chronic alcoholism, liver diseases, several cancers, and related hospitalizations and mortality. Reducing consumption of excessive alcohol and delaying the initiation of alcohol consumption is important to improving the health and vitality of our community.

How we're doing: Roughly 26.7% of adults in La Crosse drink excessively. Binge drinking costs are community millions of dollars, for example costing the La Crosse County community almost $60,000,000 due to lost productivity alone. On average, there are more than 1,040 ER visits and 740 in-patient hospital stays attributable to direct alcohol-related causes every year. Additionally, 35.1% of driving deaths are alcohol-impaired.

Other than adult use of alcohol, there are also important opportunities to intervene during adolescence. Overall, 50% of youth in La Crosse County have tried alcohol, and among those who have tried alcohol, 28% tried it for the first time before age 13. Additionally, 8% of youth engage in binge drinking. Youth who are food insecure (a proxy measure for poverty) are more likely to participate in binge drinking than their non-food insecure peers.