A map of U.S. counties that supposedly shows the percentage of residents who drink alcohol excessively has recently received a lot of attention. What immediately struck me when I first saw it was the prominence of Wisconsin, mapped as having a far higher proportion of problem drinkers than any other state. As I spent a year in Wisconsin and witnessed its drinking culture, I was initially inclined to regard this portrayal as reasonably accurate. But the more I examined the map, the more my doubts grew. The discrepancy between Wisconsin and its neighboring states is simply too stark to seem realistic. Several other states also seem to be overly differentiated from their neighbors. The low level of excessive drinking in Utah, for example, is understandable due to the prevalence of the LDS (Mormon) church, but several highly Mormon counties in southeastern Idaho are not mapped in the same way. Due to such seeming discrepancies, I plan to examine the data used to create the map and post my findings on GeoCurrents. For the time being, however, I will take this map as given and ask what it might reveal about the significance of regional drinking patterns.
It might be assumed that extremely high levels of excessive drinking would have some correlation with social disfunction. At the individual level, after all, immoderate consumption is associated with a host of health and behavioral problems. According to this map, more than a quarter of the (adult?) population drinks excessively in quite a few U.S. counties. With such high rates of drunkenness, wouldn’t these same counties be expected to exhibit some aspects of social disorder? By the same token, shouldn’t the soberest counties do relatively well according to social indicators?
What the map shows, however, does not always match this image. Many of the counties supposedly burdened by excessive drinking are prosperous, healthy, well educated, and safe. Prominent examples include the affluent Rocky Mountain counties of Colorado, Teton County, Wyoming, and Dane County, Wisconsin. By the same token, many counties in the South that are depicted as relatively free of excessive drinking are characterized by widespread poverty, low levels of health and education, and high crime rates.
Let us consider two counties on the opposite ends of the spectrum: Gallatin, in Montana, and McDowell, in West Virginia. Gallatin is mapped as having the highest rate of excessive drinking in the United States, at 26.8 percent. McDowell, in contrast, falls in the second lowest excess-drinking category. Although I have no experience with McDowell County, I know Gallatin County quite well. Its main city, Bozeman, is noted for its bars, brew pubs, and lively drinking culture. Yet it is also a safe and easy-going town embedded in a high-trust society. Gallatin County is the kind of place where people leave their trucks unlocked and running in parking lots on frigid winter mornings, unconcerned that they might be stolen. From what the data indicate, McDowell County in West Virginia is very different kind of place.
These differences can be easily elucidated through a series of maps. To begin with, Gallatin has a far higher educational level than McDowell. As can be seen, it falls into the highest tier of residents with college degrees, while McDowell falls into the lowest. Bozeman is home to Montana State University, noted for its engineering programs. It has a small but thriving tech sector, and many graduates stay in town, not wanting to leave such a pleasant and amenity-rich environment. As the second map shows, Gallatin County also has a high percentage of residents with graduate and professional degrees. Bozeman is, in other words, a “knowledge town.”
As the series of maps at the bottom of this post shows, Gallatin is far ahead of McDowell in other commonly used metrics. It is much wealthier, has a much lower homicide rate, far higher life expectancy, a strikingly lower rate of obesity, a much lower instance of tobacco-smoking, a far lower drug-overdose rate, and a significantly lower divorce rate. And as paired tables at the end of the series of illustrations show, Gallatin County is booming, attracting people from other areas at a rapid clip, whereas McDowell is losing residents at an alarming rate. In short, the “drunkest” county in the United States is remarkably successful by almost any standard, while one of the country’s “soberest” counties is withering away, plagued by numerous economic, social, and behavioral problems.
We must be wary, however, of reading too much into these comparisons, and I must again caution that the “excessive drinking” data used in this analysis may not be valid. Correlation, moreover, does not imply causation, and many other factors must also be considered. McDowell County, for example, has suffered grievously from the closure of its coal mines, which has no doubt intensified its many problems – although few of its remaining residents have evidently been driven to drink.
Yet for all of this, it is still safe to say that excessive drinking is a major cause for concern, at both the individual and societal levels. The difficulty comes in defining what “excessive” means. For a strident teetotaler, any alcohol consumption may seem excessive; for an unrepentant lush, excessive consumption is difficult to achieve. This is a complicated issue, as worrisome or dangerous levels of alcohol consumption vary from individual to individual and according to social context. At any rate, it remains to be seen how the author of this map defined the term. I suspect, however, that the definition used has a lower threshold than one that I would favor.
Despite these qualifications, I have no doubt that Gallatin County has a higher per capita level of alcohol consumption than the average American county. But is that necessarily a bad thing? The issue is debatable. Some scholars claim that moderate alcohol consumption has profound social benefits. Edward Slingerland goes so far as to argue that we would not have developed civilization without intoxication. I am not willing to go that far, but I can say that a geographical study of alcohol consumption in the United States offers no support for the position that drinking is intrinsically harmful.
As a final note, Gallatin County also seems to have a significantly higher-than-average rate of cannabis consumption.* Dispensaries are ubiquitous; the Montana Department of Revenue lists 72 in and around Bozeman, a city with only around 60,000 residents. As is the case with alcohol, I do not see any evidence that the prevalence of cannabis has harmed Gallatin County, although I am sure than many residents would disagree vociferously.
*Reliable data on cannabis consumption is impossible to find. But an AI (Grok) assessment is worth considering: “Legal sales (good proxy for market intensity, not user prevalence) data from the Montana Department of Revenue consistently put Gallatin near the top of the state in monthly legal cannabis sales—often second only to much larger Yellowstone County. Combined with Gallatin’s population (~129,000) and very high dispensary density around Bozeman, per-capita legal sales are high. That is consistent with high use by residents plus tourist/visitor purchases. Montana as a whole also ranks among the highest states for legal cannabis sales and excise-tax collections per capita.
