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Alcohol Abuse Tied to 75,000 Early Deaths

In all, a total of 2.3 million "years of potential life" were lost to alcohol abuse, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is about half of the total years of potential life lost due to smoking in 1999, the most recent year for which figures are available.

"This affirms that excessive drinking is a very serious public health problem in the United States," said Dr. Robert Brewer, alcohol team leader at the CDC and one of the co-authors of the study, which appears in the Sept. 24 issue of the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. "It's a huge public health impact."

Although there have been other estimates of deaths attributable to alcohol, this report uses a new software program to profile some 54 different conditions, Brewer said. Overall estimates are similar to estimates released earlier this year.