Texas Had A Substantial Increase In Alcohol Sales During The Pandemic

We now have the data to show how Texans were hitting the bottle and bars pretty hard during the pandemic. People were severely affected by the pandemic financially, emotionally, and even physically during the seemingly never-ending months of the pandemic. People began panic-buying items fearing that they would have trouble finding household essentials during that time and store shelves became bare. Now we're seeing some of the data from that time showing Americans were stocking up on more than Lysol and toilet paper.

A new study published this week in the journal of PLOS One looked at data gathered by the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism on monthly alcohol sales between March and June 2020. Researchers from the University at Buffalo took the data from 2020 and compared it to prior years to see how the pandemic affected alcohol sales.

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Turns out some states were hitting the bottle harder than others. According to CNN, there were four states that saw their liquor sales go up by a substantial amount- Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and our very own Texas. On top of selling plenty of hard liquor over the pandemic, while many states saw their beer sales slump, not Texas. Texas beer sales actually stayed steady and wine sales increased over several months.

The news isn't all good (if an increase in alcohol consumption was ever a good thing) as researchers from the study suggest this increase in alcohol sales could be a sign of alcohol problems in those states. To read more about the study and to see which other states were drinking heavily like Texans over the pandemic please visit the CNN website.