Blotto in Reno

According to Men's Health magazine, Reno is the second drunkest city in America, topped only by Fresno, CA. Their survey includes 100 cities and all 50 states. Rankings, assigned according to a city's overall place among those surveyed, were based on these criteria - liver disease deaths, deaths from drunk driving crashes, binge drinking, DUI arrests, and stringency of DUI laws. The numbers came from the Center for Disease Control, the Fatal Analysis Reporting System, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the FBI's Uniform Crime Statistics. Here's how Reno poured out...

• Deaths from liver disease - 3
• Deaths in DUI crashes - 54
• Binge drinking - 14
• DUI arrests - 19
• DUI laws - 18

The other eight in the top sloshed list are Billings, MT, Riverside, CA, Austin, TX, St. Louis, MO, San Antonio, TX, Lubbock, TX, Tucson, AZ, and Bakersfield, CA. Our own Sin City, Las Vegas, tipples in at 11. The Men's Health website provides a list of all 100 cities in their survey.

The numbers come from all incidents in a given city and include everyone, resident or not. Reno is the urban hub for a huge area of northern Nevada and California, a major interstate runs through the city, and hundreds of thousands visit and party while attending Reno's various big events (some of which involve lots of drinking). Those folks don't live here, but they contribute to the numbers pushing Reno to such a lofty placement on the drunk list. In other words, the conditions surrounding life in the city are not factored in. As quoted in the Reno Gazette-Journal, Serge Herzog, director of institutional analysis at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, "Rankings don't control for different context. If you factor in all the variables, you'd probably get a completely different picture."

So how accurate is this? As a reflection on the people who actually live in Reno, I'm not so sure.

Sources: Men's Health magazine, Reno Gazette-Journal.

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