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New Mexico In-Depth
AN EMERGENCY HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Alcohol kills New Mexicans at a higher rate than anywhere else in the country — and no one can fully explain why. New Mexicans die of alcohol-related causes at nearly three times the national average, higher by far than any other state. Alcohol is involved in more deaths than fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamines combined. In 2020, it killed more New Mexicans under 65 than Covid-19 did in the first year of the pandemic — all told, 1,878 people.
PAYING THE TAB
Alcohol costs New Mexico dearly. It killed 1,878 residents in 2020, three times the nation’s rate. But getting hammered here is cheap. At the Shop-N-Save on Gallup’s west side, a thirty-rack of Natural Ice beer sells for $24.95 after tax, a little over two hours’ earnings at minimum wage. Total Wine in Santa Fe offers a five-liter box of Franzia Crisp White wine for $15.15, or 45 cents per drink. And you can’t do better than Wal-Mart in Rio Rancho, where a 1.75-liter handle of Aristocrat vodka sells for $11.84, just 30 cents a drink.
A SOBER APPRAISAL
At a 12-steps meeting in Albuquerque’s foothills, one of hundreds held each week statewide, there were cowboys, Anglo women in golf shirts, and Hispanic day laborers. A woman without housing asked around for a place to stay the night. A downcast man in nurse’s scrubs said he had relapsed but hoped to go home that night, if his wife would have him.
ALCOHOL AND YOUR HEALTH
People generally overestimate the share of their peers who drink. In New Mexico, a majority of the adult population abstains: just 49% reported having consumed a drink in the previous month. Drinkers’ beliefs about what constitutes safe and appropriate levels of consumption are powerfully shaped by drinkers around them. Hence...
EVERY DOOR IS THE RIGHT DOOR
Once a prosperous salesman in the construction industry, he’d lost his job and health insurance. Gone were the dream house he’d designed in Albuquerque’s foothills and many of the motorcycles he’d owned. The last one, a Kawasaki W650 with a peashooter exhaust, sat in his garage in disrepair.
RESOURCES FOR REPORTERS
Drinking is involved in a huge and rising number of illnesses and injuries nationwide yet rarely receives attention by reporters in proportion to that harm. Whether your beat is health, traffic safety, violent crime, business, culture, or politics, alcohol is a big untapped opportunity. New Mexico In Depth’s series Blind...
Eight years after murders, Native people still outsized share of Albuquerque homelessStatewide, unhoused Native people appear to be dying more frequently and at younger ages than any other group.
Stephanie Plummer remembers her brother Kee Thompson as an exceedingly kind person, quiet at first but talkative and outgoing once he got to know people. “If there was someone who was struggling and needed the shirt off his back, he would give it to them,” Plummer said during an interview with New Mexico In Depth.
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New Mexico In Depth is a member-supported, digital first, nonpartisan news organization. We were founded in 2012 as a response to ongoing downsizing among traditional news organizations.
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