The Country Where People Drink The Most Alcohol

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 17, 2:01PM EST

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The Country Where People Drink The Most Alcohol — © Ryhor Bruyeu / iStock via Getty Images

The World Health Organization (WHO) keeps Substance Abuse Country Profiles for each of the world’s countries. Most recently, it was able to get data from 171 out of 194 (88%) Member States. One of the goals of the work is to cut down on the harmful use of alcohol. And in some nations, it is a serious problem.

The basic metric for alcohol use is “liters consumed per capita per year.” According to Alcohol.org, the nation at the top of the list is Belarus at 14.4 liters. That is over one and a half times the US level. The nation has tried to dodge the truth of the statistics. However, “While the Belarusian government was quick to deny the statistics published by WHO, national anti-alcohol programs were implemented in order to decrease the level of consumption.”

Lithuania follows Belarus at 12.9 liters, Grenada at 11.9, and The Czech Republic at 11.8. The figure for France is also 11.8. Close behind, the figure for Russia is 11.5. The US number is 8.7 liters, ranking 25th among all the nations measured. This is the drunkest city in every state in America.

Belarus is in Eastern Europe and is landlocked. Poland is on its western border, as is Lithuania, and Russia is on its eastern one. It is just north of Ukraine. The country has a population of 9.3 million people.

According to The World Factbook, Belarus is a relatively advanced economy. GDP per capita sits at about $19,000. That figure is 91st in the world. Income is relatively high because the country is a manufacturing center.

What demographics do not tell is why some countries have heavy drinking numbers. Several of those at the top of the list are in Eastern Europe. However, that is not proof of anything.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.