Puzzlingly, these increases in alcohol-related morbidity and mortality have been accompanied by comparatively small increases in per-capita alcohol consumption as measured by excise tax receipts, which rose approximately 6% during the 2002–2013 time period (Haughwout and Slater, 2017). This does not rule out the possibility of large increases in AUD prevalence, but generally one would expect large increases in AUD prevalence to be accompanied by large increases in per capita consumption, because the vast majority of alcohol is consumed by the heaviest of drinkers (Kerr and Greenfield, 2007, Grucza and Plunk, 2016). Furthermore, data from other survey sources do not necessarily indicate large increases in the prevalence of AUD or binge drinking. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)—the only other source of data for AUD trends in the US—suggests a roughly 5% decline in past-12 month AUD prevalence among adults during this same period (Cheng et al., 2018). Furthermore, NSDUH results indicated relatively flat rates of frequent binge episodic drinking among adults over 25 during this time period, and a decline for younger adults ages 18–25 (Substance
