Minorities, the elderly and women are drinking much more alcohol

THE White House has plans to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. This concern is justified: in their legal and illegal forms, opioids kill an American every 16 minutes. Yet a focus on opioids has eclipsed the damage caused by an even deadlier, more common substance. Between 2006 and 2010, an average of 106,765 Americans died each year from alcohol-related causes such as liver disease, alcohol poisoning and drunk driving—more than twice the number of overdoses from all drugs and more than triple the number of opioid overdoses in 2015. Although Americans quaff less alcohol per person than the pub-loving British and Irish or the beer-fond Germans, they are drinking far more heavily than they used to.