The study, conducted by Delphi Behavioral Health Group using data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), also found that the number of alcohol consumers in the US armed forces has been rising steadily since 2014.
Employees of the armed forces spent the most days engaging in binge-drinking, the researchers found. According to the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, binge-drinking is defined as "a pattern of drinking alcohol that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 gram percent or above." In average adults, this translates to five or more drinks in men and four or more in women over a two hour period.
The study was limited in scope due to the low number of armed forces members that reported on their drinking habits. Out of a total of 26,743 people whose responses were surveyed for the study, only 81 were in the armed forces at the time of the survey. This could very well indicate that the limited sample set for the study happened to be heavy drinkers in the armed forces.
The more confident findings, statistically speaking, are those regarding the health care and social assistance field — more than 3,500 respondents in this sector reported the fewest number of drinks consumed, and consistently ranked at the bottom of the list in terms of the number of days on which they drank. This could very well be attributed to the nature of the profession, which presumably requires employees to be alert, or many employers might do regular drug and alcohol testing
In 2017, Sputnik reported on the CDC's findings that Americans binge-drink 17 billion drinks annually. Among US states and territories, Washington, DC, took the top spot in population percentage of heavy drinkers, followed by Vermont and Wisconsin.
