Gaby
Is there anything in the world untouched by global warming? Scientists now claim that the climate crisis has fueled an increase in alcohol and drug abuse. They argue that high temperatures and sunny days encourage daytime drinking. A team from Columbia University analyzed hospitalization rates in New York State over the past 20 years and found a rise in alcoholism and drug addiction correlating with elevated temperatures.
Drinking Outdoors: Enjoyable but Risky
Experts suggest that excessive alcohol consumption may be linked to people’s tendency to drink more in pleasant weather outdoors. Another contributing factor could be increased sweating, which leads to dehydration, as reported by the Daily Mail.
As for drug use (including cannabis, cocaine, opioids, and sedatives), warming temperatures have also resulted in a rise in visits to addiction specialists.
Lead author of the study, Robbie M. Parks, confirmed, “We found that during periods of particularly high temperatures, there was a corresponding increase in hospital visits related to alcohol and psychoactive substance use.”
What Scientists Discovered
The team analyzed data from 671,625 hospital visits related to alcohol use and 721,469 visits due to drug use disorders. They compared this data with information on daily temperatures and relative humidity. They then created a statistical model for days with higher and lower temperatures and examined the impact of short-term climate phenomena, such as heatwaves, on substance abuse.
The researchers observed a pattern: the higher the temperature, the more visits to doctors related to alcohol consumption.
The data revealed that hospital visits related to alcohol increased by 24 percent with rising temperatures, while visits related to drugs surged by 42 percent.
According to senior study author Marianti-Anna Kioumurtzoglou, medical interventions aimed at addressing alcohol and drug disorders during hot weather (such as targeted awareness campaigns about the risks of substance abuse in such conditions) should be a public health priority.
Interestingly, the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. released data for 2022 showing that the highest rates of alcohol-related hospitalizations occurred in July, August, and May.
