Statewide Iowa — Information gathered by the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy shows an increase in alcohol-related deaths from 440 in 2011 to 827 in 2021. The director of the office, Dale Woolery, says the pandemic could be part of the reason for the increase.
He says alcohol wasn’t the only issue during the pandemic.
Woolery says there is one thing that stands out about the deaths linked to alcohol.
He says alcohol deaths are often part of a larger medical history.
He says the drug overdose deaths are usually much quicker, and more recently they can happen pretty quickly without long-term drug use. Woolery says those who study this as a matter of cultural differences have historically found Iowa and other Midwestern states have had a track record of higher than average drinking with binge and excessive drinking included.
Woolery says we might be relatively low for drug overdose deaths, but we have trended up over the last two years, so those numbers are not going in the direction we want. There were 258 opioid-related deaths in Iowa in 2021. The Office of Drug Control Policy gathers the information to create its report to the governor each year and it is used to set its drug control policies.
