Alcohol is quietly becoming one of Mexico’s deadliest public health problems. According to the country’s latest National Survey on Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Use (Encodat 2025), alcohol-related causes now claim roughly 112 lives a day—more than 41,000 deaths a year—and the toll keeps climbing as drinking habits shift nationwide.
The survey found that 73.7% of Mexicans between ages 12 and 65 now drink alcohol regularly, up from 71% in 2016. The most striking change is among women, whose drinking rate jumped from 62.6% to 69.3% in less than a decade, even as men’s consumption dipped slightly, from 80.1% to 78.5%.
Edgar Angulo, a member of Mexico’s Interagency Technical Committee on Alcohol (CTISA), told Excélsior that the rising death toll shouldn’t surprise anyone: at least six of the country’s ten leading causes of death are linked to alcohol use. These include liver cirrhosis, cancer, gender-based violence, traffic accidents and suicide—conditions that experts describe as part of a largely invisible epidemic hiding behind Mexico’s drinking culture.
Public health officials warn that without stronger prevention policies, the trend—especially the sharp rise among women—could deepen an already alarming health crisis.
To read the full report, visit Excélsior’s original article.
Source: <![CDATA[El alcohol cobra 41 mil vidas al año en México; epidemia silenciosa]]> (RSS::excelsior.com.mx – Portada).
Image: Λίνα Μούρτζιου, BY-SA 4.0 (via Openverse).