The decline of drinking, explained in one chart

Today, around 8,200 or so Americans will turn 21. Which means, of course, they will become eligible to engage in that time-honored habit of adulthood: drinking alcohol. (I’m sure absolutely none of them did so before they turned 21. I certainly did not, or at least, would not admit to doing so in this piece, which I know my parents read.)

Yet those who get the chance to legally order a beer or a wine or, God help them, a Long Island iced tea, may find the bar a little less crowded these days. According to a new survey released by Gallup this week, just 54 percent of Americans now say they drink alcohol. That’s the lowest share since Gallup began tracking the question way back in 1939, six years after Prohibition was repealed.

Even Americans who do continue to drink say they are drinking less, and say they’re increasingly concerned about the health impacts of alcohol. A narrow majority of Americans say that even moderate drinking is unhealthy, while reported drinking frequency also hit record lows. (Only 24 percent reported having a drink over the past 24 hours, while 40 percent said it had been more than a week since their last glass.) And while you might be skeptical of self-reporting drinking habits — doctors certainly are — the most recent sales data says that per-capita ethanol consumption in the US has fallen from nearly 2.8 gallons in the early 1980s to around 2.5 in 2022.

Unless you happen to be in the booze business, this shift is 100-proof good news (with a few caveats). Drinking can lead to various social and medical ills, from the familial and financial devastation of alcoholism at the high end to increases in the risk of cancer and other diseases even at the lower end.

But in a culture which seems to celebrate and encourage drinking, what’s up with more Americans putting down their glasses?

Americans of a certain age — i.e., me — probably remember hearing that a glass of red wine a day could be good for you. Which, looking back, seems absurd. Ethanol in any form is a toxin. But thanks in part to what became known as the “French paradox” — the fact that the French showed low levels of heart disease despite their love of rich, fatty foods and glasses of Bordeaux — conventional wisdom settled on the idea that moderate drinking could actually benefit our overall health.

If only. In the argot of Alcoholics Anonymous, medical science is having a “moment of clarity” around alcohol. It turns out that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health,” as the World Health Organization put it in 2023. One major meta-analysis that same year found that there are in fact no mortality benefits at low levels of alcohol consumption, and that risk for a number of health threats rises as consumption increases.

Those threats include numerous cancers, like breast, colorectal, liver, and esophageal. Even low-level drinking can lead to increased blood pressure, higher stroke risk, and disrupted sleep — which in turn can lead to a host of health problems over time. It’s no surprise that more and more countries — though not yet the US — are giving their citizens official guidance that no level of alcohol consumption can be recommended.

The decline and fall of teen drinking

Whether or not American adults are actually listening to their doctors, the decline in alcohol consumption is real. What’s even more remarkable — and even better news — is the sharper decline in drinking among people who legally shouldn’t be doing it at all: the underage.

In 2024, according to one long-running youth survey, 42 percent of 12th graders reported drinking alcohol, down significantly from 75 percent in 1997 (which happens to be the year I graduated high school, and no, I will not be commenting on which side of the survey I fell on). For 10th graders it was 26 percent (down from 65 percent) and for eighth graders it was 13 percent (down from 46 percent in 1997, which yikes). For those underage Americans who are drinking, the percentage who engage in binge drinking has also fallen in recent years, albeit less sharply.

The benefits of reduced teen drinking are even clearer than they are with adults. About 4,000 Americans under the age of 21 every year die from excessive alcohol consumption, whether in car crashes, drownings, or suicides and homicides. Underage drinking is correlated with worse academic performance, risky behavior in general, and an increased chance of alcohol abuse disorder down the line.

Alcohol is really bad — with one caveat

Here’s one of the more unbelievable stats I’ve ever seen: scholars believe that something like 40 percent of all murders involve the use of alcohol. That’s just one example of the effects of dangerous levels of alcohol consumption. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates around 178,000 excess deaths each year from alcohol abuse, of which over 12,000 were deaths in drunk driving accidents — meaning one out of every three car crash deaths might not have happened without alcohol.

Less alcohol consumption means less of all of this. Fewer violent deaths in drunken homicides or car crashes, and fewer lives cut short over the long term because of alcohol-connected illness. It means fewer families torn apart by alcohol abuse, and fewer children who endure the long-term trauma of being the child of an alcoholic.

If there’s any downside to this drop in drinking, it’s the possibility that the decline is being driven by a decline of socializing more generally. Americans are spending more time alone than ever before, and that comes with very serious health and social impacts of its own. We have, oh, several thousand years of evidence that alcohol consumption in moderate, responsible levels is pretty good for socializing, and right now, many of us need all the help we can get.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting everyone stop drinking — or start drinking just to make friends. I myself enjoy a drink, and for now I’m comfortable with the trade-off that comes with moderate drinking. But the benefits to the country overall of less drinking are impossible to dismiss. That’s worth raising a mocktail to.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!