It's OK as far as it goes, but it's a bit surface level. The report reports the ~70,000 deaths and correctly notes that it may understate the total alcohol-related deaths. It also shows that drunk-driving deaths are down, focusing the concern to medical effects. And it contextualizes it against opioids and cigarettes, two other prominent drug killers. But I found the story surface-level. It does not correlate the deaths to the amount people drink. About a quarter of Americans almost or actually never drink, while 10% of us have 10 or more drinks per day. (Yes, that's astonishing to me, too.) It's hardly outrageous to think most of the deaths occur in the relatively small number—10%–25%?—of people who drink the majority of alcohol. Or perhaps they hit people who binge in ways that overwhelm their livers. The article notes that smoking deaths are almost 500,000 smoking deaths per year, but doesn't contextualize it by noting the similar number of smokers—the CDC reports that about 10% of Americans smoke. It's hard for moderate drinkers to see what harm drinking might be doing them, and moderate drinkers are the likely readers. For those of us concerned about public health, it's ALSO hard to tell from this story whether US policy should discourage drinking, or focus, as it does with opiates & cigarettes, on the relatively much smaller number of people who abuse the substance.

This article is brief, but it is packed full of well-sourced figures relevant to alcohol consumption and deaths. If there's a figure you wanted to know about Americans and their drinking habits, it's likely in this piece. No fluff or spin whatsoever, just the facts.