Tennesseans Hitting The Hooch Harder: Report

Tennesseans either bent more bottles or answered more honestly about their drinking habits in 2017, according to an annual report.

United Health Group's yearly round-up of the healthiest states found that excessive drinking increased 29 percent in the last year with 14.4 percent of Tennessee adults either binge drinking - defined as four or more drinks for women or five or more for men at least once in a 30 day period - or chronic drink - eight or more drinks weekly for women or 15 for men. That's up from 11.2 percent.

Despite the spike, Tennessee still has the sixth-lowest excessive drinking rate. West Virginia has the nation's lowest rate at 11.8 percent.

Overall, Tennessee ranks as the 45th healthiest state based on a combination of behavioral and outcome-based measurements, down a spot from last year.

Among the challenges identified by United are high incidence of adult obesity (nearly 35 percent) and smoking (22.1 percent), along with deaths by violent crime. Tennessee had 633 deaths by violent crime per 100,000 population, the fourth-highest rate in the country.

Over the last five years, drug deaths in Tennessee have increased 27 percent.

As for good news? Tennesseans have essentially the same level of health regardless of education and the state has one of the country's lowest rates of whooping cough.

The country's healthiest state is Masschusetts and the least healthy is Mississippi.

See the entire report.

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