Durhamites have accomplished something they can toast to: a study conducted by Men's Health has crowned Durham the least dangerously drunk city in America.
The magazine ranked the "Drunkest Cities" in the country based on rates of death due to alcoholic liver disease, reports of binge drinking, number of drunk-driving arrests, percentages of fatal accidents involving intoxicated motorists and states' efforts to cut down on excessive drinking.
"I don't think of [Durham] as a safe place, regardless of statistics," senior Darby McEvoy said, adding that he was especially shocked to see the magazine endorse Durham's safety given the recent spike in violent crime.
Men's Health gave Durham the best grade of 100 cities analyzed, an 'A-plus,' for what it found to be safer-than-average alcohol consumption. A's were also awarded to Miami, Fla., and Buffalo, N.Y. The magazine recommended membership in Alcoholics Anonymous to the cities of Denver, Colo., Anchorage, Alaska, and Colorado Springs, Colo.
Of all cities analyzed, the magazine found Durham to have the fifth-lowest number of binge drinkers-a surprising given the region's high concentration of college students.
"Duke kids will drink as much as a kid at a state school would drink throughout the day in a short period of time," senior Warren Davis said. "Everyone here drinks a lot."
But Jean Hanson, administrative director of the Student Health Center, said although student drinking often does not come to administrators' attention unless it has reached a dangerous level, she thinks the majority of Duke students consume alcohol responsibly.
"I think the perception is that there's a lot more unhealthy drinking going on than there actually is."
Freshman Gregory Morrison said the Durham Police Department should spend less time worrying about students' alcohol consumption, given the findings of the study.
"I think this proves that DPD should be protecting graduate students from crime as opposed to monitoring off-campus parties," he said.
But Robert Foss, senior research scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Highway Safety Research Center, advised against reading too much into Durham's rating. He noted that such judgments require complicated data analysis that magazines are rarely equipped to conduct.
Foss said a city's drunk-driving arrests numbers are a reflection mostly of how much such laws are enforced, and resources are often focused on more violent types of crime.
"A conclusion based on [these figures] is vacuous," Foss said. "You may actually see numbers lower in Durham, but what does that mean?"
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