What’s Behind the Drop? US Alcohol Consumption Reaches Historic Low

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Americans are drinking less, a new Gallup poll suggests.

Data from a national survey released Wednesday showed that only 54 percent of U.S. adults said they consumed alcohol. This is the lowest percentage in Gallup’s 90 years of collecting data on drinking behavior. Those who did drink alcohol said they were consuming less, the poll found.

Gallup’s annual poll has tracked a steady downturn in drinking: From 1997 to 2023, at least 60 percent of Americans said they consumed alcohol. That number fell to 58 percent in 2024, then to a record low this year.

And for the first time since Gallup began asking respondents what they thought about the health effects of moderate drinking, the majority of Americans said they believed that even one to two drinks a day negatively affected a person’s health.

The survey reflects a persistent trend over the last decade: Young people are drinking less. And it suggests that middle-aged adults — who in recent years have reported drinking more and developed alcohol-related illnesses at higher rates — are starting to cut back.

A decade or two ago, “there was this perception that a glass of red wine with dinner every night might actually help you live longer,” said Dr. Scott Hadland, the chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Mass General for Children and an addiction specialist. In the 1990s, some doctors even encouraged moderate drinking.

But over the last few years, the health harms of drinking have come into focus. The number of alcohol-related deaths more than doubled among Americans between 1999 and 2020. And mounting research suggests that even a little alcohol takes a toll on the body, damaging DNA. Last year, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then the surgeon general, stressed that drinking caused preventable cancers and called for alcoholic beverages to carry warning labels, like cigarettes.