Why isn’t alcohol seen as a public health emergency?

Alcohol kills more Americans than any other drug by a wide margin. But discussions about substance use epidemics in the U.S. are usually centered around drugs like fentanyl or meth. In fact, most people in the U.S. do not see alcohol is as much of a public health problem at all. My STAT colleagues, reporters Isabella Cueto and Lev Facher, spent months examining this contradiction — how can such a dangerous substance be treated with such ambivalence? Earlier this week they launched a new STAT series “The Deadliest Drug” that aims to answer that question. In this week’s STATus Report, I chat with Cueto and Facher about their reporting, what they learned about booze in the U.S., and what, if anything, can be done to tackle the harms of alcohol in this country.