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The Gallup Poll has been tracking the drinking habits of Americans every year dating all the way back to 1939. In the latest poll, they found that Americans are drinking less, by one percentage point, than they ever have in the history of the poll.
The trend of Americans drinking less comes as no surprise to those who follow industry news, or those who are simply reading the writing on the wall.
Last year (2024), 58% of Americans reported they drink alcohol. In 2023 that figure was 62%. This year? A historic low of just 54% of Americans reporting that they drink alcohol, in any amount, or a drop of 8% points in the past two years along.
Americans Drinking Less Alcohol Aligns With Recent Health Guidance
Breaking out the data across genders, Gallup found that 11% less women are drinking now compared to 2023 and 5% of men are drinking less.
What’s driving all of this? Well, CBS News and Gallup both note that guidance from the U.S. government in recent years suggesting no amount of alcohol consumption at all is safe might be impacting behavior.
The current U.S. government guidance, per DietaryGuidelines.gov, on alcohol consumption says that “drinking less alcohol is better for health than drinking more. Individuals who do not drink alcohol should not start drinking for any reason.”
That same guidance goes on to state that 2 or fewer drinks per day for men and 1 or fewer per day for women is the amount that alcohol consumption should be limited to. Though, the current administration is set to remove that guidance according to recent reports.
What they are saying is if you are not currently drinking you should NOT start drinking. And if you do drink then restrict the amount by a lot.
Finally, millennials aren’t being blamed!
For the entirety of my adult life I have been inundated by headlines claiming ‘millennials killed’ one thing or another. I quickly Googled ‘millennials are killing drinking’ just to see what was out there and saw results from The Guardian, The Atlantic, and several medical publications on Page 1 of Google.
But the steep decline in alcohol consumption across the United States cannot and will not be attributed to millennials alone. The decline can be seen across all age groups, though it is most severe in Gen Z, according to a reporter earlier this year from TIME.
According to CBS News, roughly 66% of individuals aged 18-to-34 believe that “moderate drinking is unhealthy.”
Why start listening now?
One lingering question I have about this narrative that Americans are drinking less because they are told by the U.S. government that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe is…why are people suddenly listening to the government?
The past 5 years have proven unequivocally that an enormous portion of the U.S. population distrust the government and are wary of scientists and experts. So what is it about this alcohol guidance that is suddenly causing people to believe the government and drink less?
There doesn’t appear to be a clear answer for that. So I will remain a bit skeptical that the government is the driver of change here, and not economic factors driving up the cost of alcohol and/or leaving people with less disposable income to spend on alcohol.
Tariffs have driven up the cost of alcohol (and coffee), with French wines and Scotch facing large tariffs, according to a report from the Independent.
Domestically, grocery prices are still wildly expensive. So it tracks that many people simply would not see the value in spending disposable income on alcohol when everything else in life is more expensive than it was 1, 2, or 3 years ago.
Americans Drinking Less and Changing Demographics
It is also worth considering that the U.S. population is simply getting older. And older people drink less.
The median age in the United States passed 39 years old in 2024. It went up in 329 of 387 metro areas across the country, according to the most recent Census Bureau data.
Older people deal with a slew of health-related issues that are often exacerbated by alcohol consumption. The amount of alcohol people can consume and the frequency declines a LOT with age. You don’t see many 50-year-old crushing 36 beers in a day like they could in college, do you?
I haven’t even mentioned the prevalence of recreational marijuana legalization and the impact that has had on both alcohol sales and pharmaceutical dependency!
All of that is to say, anyone who is reading the room can see that Americans drinking less is inevitable.