Lakeview Is Chicago's Binge Drinking Capital, New CDC Report Says

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Dec 21, 2016 7:29PM

via The CDC.

Surprising literally no one, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention's latest report on health in U.S. cities shows that Chicago's North Side—and Lakeview in particular—is the area where Chicagoans are most likely to be binge-drinkers.

Home to Wrigley Field, several popular nightlife hubs including Boystown, countless students from universities around the city and the horror show bar crawl known as TBOX, Lakeview also contains the Census tracts where residents are most likely to be binge drinkers—as many as 31.8 to 44 percent of residents of parts of Lakeview reported binge drinking within the past month, based on the 2014 data. The Lakeview census tracts where binge-drinking was highest put the area in the top 1 percentile for binging-drinking out of anywhere in the country.

Overall, the North Side and Northwest Side appeared to have the most binge-drinking residents, while parts of the West Side and the South Side were much more likely to have fewer binge drinking residents—between 2.2 and 16 percent. The numbers go up again as you head farther Southwest toward Midway airport, according to the data.

Binge-drinking, according to the CDC, typically describes when a man has had five or more drinks or a woman has had four or more drinks within a span of two hours.

WBEZ has an in-depth report on the findings, and talked to the CDC's Dr. Robert Brewer, who suggested that an increase to the tax on alcohol, or other regulatory measures, could curb binge-drinking in Chicago.