Heavy drinking in adults
Percentage of adults aged 18 and over who are heavy drinkers: men having more than 14 drinks a week and women more than 7 drinks a week, on average over the past 30 days. Crude prevalence, not age-adjusted.
CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a telephone survey of adults, crude prevalence. States and DC only: BRFSS publishes the median of the states rather than a national prevalence, so no national value is served. A state that did not meet BRFSS data standards in a year has no value, and CDC withholds estimates from fewer than 50 respondents or with a relative standard error above 0.3. The dataset also publishes 95% confidence intervals. The series starts in 2011, when BRFSS changed its weighting and added cell phones. From 2011 to 2014 (variable _RFDRHV4) BRFSS stated the threshold per day: more than two drinks for men and more than one for women, the same average. Later years use variables _RFDRHV5 to _RFDRHV9.
Key facts
- Montana had the highest heavy drinking in adults of 48 states in 2025, at 7.7%, and New Jersey the lowest, at 3.4%. Source: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Published for 51 places, with figures from 2011 to 2025.
Rankings
US states by heavy drinking in adults, 2025
Places with data
Regions and states
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- New York
- Pennsylvania
- Illinois
- Ohio
- Georgia
- North Carolina
- Michigan
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Oklahoma
Use this data in your AI agent
Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:
Which places have the highest heavy drinking in adults? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"adult_heavy_drinking_rate","level":"region","within":"United States"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=adult_heavy_drinking_rate&level=region&within=United%20States