Oregonians Are Nearly Twice as Likely to Die From Alcoholic Liver Disease As People From Other States

It could be worse. You could live in Washington.

By Lizzy Acker

We Oregonians looooove our bars. We love our craft beers, our local wines and our artisanal spirits. If it's not Beer Week in Portland, it's Whiskey Weekend.

But maybe we love our alcohol too much.

A new map on the PBS News Hour site, produced by Stateline using 2014 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows "types of deaths whose rates are higher than the national norm" for each state. Because while many of the top causes of death are similar state-to-state—cancer and heart disease, mainly—each state has its own special, distinctive cause of death, a way to shuffle off the mortal coil that happens at a higher rate in that state than it does nationally.

In Oregon, our "most overrepresented cause of death" is "alcoholic liver disease," which is a term that basically means any kind of liver issue that is the direct result of too much booze and can include fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and chronic hepatitis with liver fibrosis or cirrhosis.

It's not pretty.

Nationally, the average number of people who die from alcoholic liver disease is 5.4 per 100,000. Here in the Beaver State, we clock in at an (un)healthy 10.7 per 100,000.

Maybe it's time to pump the brakes a little on patio drinking every night?

But on the other hand, it could be worse. You could live in Washington.

Oregon's Canada has the unhappy distinction of being the state where a little less than twice as many people as the national average die from Alzheimer's.

On average, 25.4 people out of 100,000 die from Alzheimer's. But in Washington, a distressing 43.6 people out of 100,000 succumb to the disease.

Or it could be weirder. In Wisconsin, 16.9 out of 100,000 people die from falling. Just, falling. The national average on death by fall? 8.8 out of 100,000.

It does get icy in Wisconsin in the winter. Maybe people need better boots?

You can check out the whole map and see which states have an extra high rate of death by homicide here. (Hint: one of those states starts with "F" and ends in "lorida").

And remember: Cut back on the booze, dude, and don't even think about relocating to Washington.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.