DC and Drunk

We just might be seeing double but there are two (2) count them two (2) stories about the "drunkest" places in the United States and in our area - no where is as drunk as Washington DC. Actually the two articles aren't exactly the same. The first which uses data from 2007 comes from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) which rated Washington DC as the third (3rd) "drunkest" state in the nation. North Carolina ranked seventh (7th) in the state rating. None of the other local jurisdictions ranked in the NIAAA top ten (10) highlighted states. The second story or the one on the left (depending on if were seeing double or not) is a city ranking being published by Men's Health magazine but previewed by USA Today. The most recent listing includes both a number and a grade.

According to the USA Today article, here is the listing that shows how our area fared when compared to the rest of the nation:

NUMBER UNITED STATES CITY RANK 37.) 43.) 60.) 63.) 70.) 78.) 94.) Washington, DC Greensboro, NC Baltimore, MD Raleigh, NC Virginia Beach, VA Richmond, VA Durham, NC D+ C- C C C+ B- A

For our area the District of Columbia is the "drunkest" city in our jurisdiction. Thank you USA Today though we like to think of the District of Columbia as a political powerhouse, the seat of government, the home of the "three martini" lunch where our national representatives historically drank heavily and sought the favors of "painted women." Men's Health shows that while we're not the country's "drunkest" we're the "drunkest" with power and alcohol in the region. Add cigarettes and salted meat to the area mix - and you're talking all kinds of bad news. The next political movement should be, now that we've got a smokefree DC, is drink free DC.

Abstinence now but, of course, most of us don't drink and that slogan hasn't been applied to alcohol. While adults promote sexual abstinence for their teenage children we certainly wouldn't want any one to promote anything curtailing our current lifestyle decisions bad as they might be for us. At the very least we suggest taking the advice of Michael VanRooyen, an emergency medicine specialist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital and an associate professor at both Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health:

“Don’t drink and drive is the first 10 things I would remind people of,” VanRooyen said. “While everybody is worried about eating poinsettia leaves [over the holidays], the way to stay out of the Emergency Department is to not drink too much, and certainly don’t drink and drive.”

It's also a way to get all of our jurisdictions to the bottom of the top one hundred (100) "drunkest" cities in America list. That title is certainly not something that the governors, mayors or the "chambers of commerce" hope to promote to the tourists and visitors to our fair cities. They generally are the ones to suffer as a result of that title either. That's something that largely occurs to we the citizens.