While COVID-19 was devastating communities across the United States, a different destructive uptick in deaths went unnoticed. A new study from the National Institutes of Health shows that more adults between the ages of 18 and 65 perished from alcohol-related causes in 2020 than from COVID-19. This parallels earlier data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed a large increase in the number of drug overdose deaths in the 12 months leading up to May 2020; the total was the highest ever recorded.
Dr. Kaplan is a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), senior adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and a visiting fellow with the Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange. He’s the author of Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time.
