Forbes Names Austin, TX Drunkest City

Yes, these really are some of the local reactions to Austin, Texas being named the drunkest city in America.

Forbes Magazine used the highly suspect Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey (the CDC is a government operation remember, and I'm still waiting for our government to get a clue) to rank Austinites.

According to Forbes, "61.5% of adult Austinites admitted to having at least one drink of alcohol within the past 30 days." That doesn't seem so bad. But there is more. The apparently too business-minded folks at Forbes noted that a "staggering 20.6% of respondents confess to binge drinking." How do they define binge drinking? It's five or more drinks on one occasion. That's not binge drinking or at least it wasn't back when I was doing it. Back in the day someone would show up to one of my parties with a six pack and I'd take it, thank them, and politely inquire what they were going to drink. Five is the number of drinks the amateurs try to drink on New Year's Eve and why I stay home that night. We may party in Austin, but we are not in favor of drinking and driving. Are we hurting anyone? Here is where it gets tricky.

From the Forbes article: "'The [social] cost of alcohol is in the billions of dollars . . .' says Paul Gruenewald, scientific director of the Prevention Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, . . . The other half is related to other harms that happen to people when drinking; primarily drunk driving, drunk driving crashes, pedestrian injuries, violent assaults, and various criminal behaviors and various injuries.'"

So, this scientific director seems to be intimating that because Austinites rank #1 in drinking that somehow that makes the folks in Austin menaces?

Let's take a look at that. Anyone can find numbers and statistics to support an opinion. Consider this: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released the results of its first of a kind study ranking states by number of DWIs. Guess where Texas ranks? 28^th - in the middle. As for crime, Texas ranked 36^th.in 2004 Of course, we are a big state. In 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report for cities with populations greater than 250,000 in 2006 ranked Austin at 69 out of 72 for murder. That means there were only 3 cities in that group with fewer murders than Austin.

But, this is verging on boring and this isn't supposed to be a scientific paper.

I asked some of my Yelper buddies (Yelp.com) who are local to Austin to let me know their reactions to Austin being the drunkest city in America. The local reaction while varied has one common element - we aren't taking it too seriously.

"I don't take it as an insult. It just means to me that if you come to visit Austin, you will have a good time. As far as the negative views . . . 'Disturbing the peace, vandalism, and sometimes violent' that's an individual thing. I've been downtown plenty of times drunk with my friends and in the 10+ years I have been here none of us have disturbed the peace, vandalized, or have become violent. But all that article will do is bring more people to Austin. Thanks Forbes!"

"Statistics need to be analyzed - sure if you take the 6th street corridor and ask only 18-25yo during a festival week - sure they are drinking. We have a young demo here in Austin, lots of visitors, lots of 'entertainment' as an industry here- so it's skewed to that effect. And our cops here don't have to deal with as many other big city disturbances that other cities have. They deal with lots of drunk kids and festival logistics (wrangling drunk people) as a huge part of their day-to-day."

"I think everyone just wants to talk about Austin. We're the drunkest, dirtiest, bestest, whatever. These lists are always coming out and we're always on 'em!"

"Haha! I knew I moved here for a reason..."

"Residents who had at least one drink in the last 30 days: 61.5% Huh? Who are these 38.5% of people who haven't had a drink? Hell, even my 68-year-old mama up in Anderson Mill is drinking daily."

"I'd say that 30 percent to 40 percent of the people I know don't drink at all or drink only on major holidays."

John Kelso, our iconic humorist from the Austin American-Statesman had these comments. "It's nice to be rated tops in something other than most hours spent stuck in traffic."

"Drunks were asked by the CDC how many drinks they had. Everybody knows you can't believe a drunk when you ask him how much he's had to drink. That's like asking, say, John Edwards about his girlfriend. If you don't believe me, ask a cop. He'll tell you that every time you ask a drunk how many drinks he's had, the answer is always "'two.'"

"This study doesn't take into account that drinking around here is seasonal. We have two seasons in Austin: football or drinking season, and nonfootball or on-the-wagon season. See, there are two reasons why Austinites drink too much. They drink because the Longhorns are winning. Or they drink because the Longhorns are losing."

http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k8/stateDUI/press.htm#Tab

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004912.html

http://www.yelp.com/topic/austin-what-do-you-think-about-forbes-magazine-naming-austin-the-drunkest-city