Americans drank less alcohol even before the surgeon general weighed in

The U.S. surgeon general wants to warn consumers about the health risks associated with alcohol. But many Americans - especially younger ones - may have already gotten the message.

Statistics show that consumption of alcoholic drinks was trending downward long before Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy’s recent call for rethinking recommended limits and adding warning labels about cancer risks.

Alcohol sales volume in the United States fell 2.8 percent in the first seven months of 2024, according to IWSR, a beverage industry analysis firm. Almost every major alcoholic beverage category declined, with beer falling 3.5 percent, spirits down 3 percent and wine dipping 4 percent. Some of the biggest companies in the industry - including Pernod Ricard, Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev - reported declines in sales or volume in their most recent quarters.

Multiple surveys signal a drop in drinking among younger Americans. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s annual Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average amount that U.S. residents younger than 25 spent on alcohol in 2023 dropped more than 60 percent from 2003 when adjusted for inflation. A 2024 Gallup poll found that the share of younger adults who say they drink fell from 72 percent to 59 percent in the last two decades. Forty-five percent of Gen Z consumers older than 21 said they did not consume any alcoholic drinks in 2023, according to a 2024 NielsonIQ survey.

For Gen Z, alcohol lacks the “unquestioned symbolic power” it held for previous generations who had seen it as a rite of passage into adulthood, said Kasey Creswell, an associate psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has researched young people’s relationships with alcohol. Younger consumers, Creswell said, are more open to social activities that don’t center on alcohol and prioritize their health more than their predecessors.

Many people took another look at their drinking habits during the pandemic, she added.

“People have had the opportunity to step back while they’re not drinking and reevaluate their relationship to alcohol and what it meant for them, what their triggers were, and how it was functioning in a way that’s really hard to do while you’re still drinking,” Creswell said. “They want to come back to alcohol with more information, more knowledge in hand about when they want to drink and be more deliberate about how much they’re drinking and why they’re drinking.”

Gallup’s poll found that between 2016 and 2024, the share of respondents who viewed moderate drinking as “good for health” dropped from 19 percent to 8 percent, while the share who viewed it as “bad for health” increased from 26 percent to 45 percent. Sixty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 viewed moderate drinking as bad for health in 2024, the survey reported.

Kimber Gonzales, 28, drank three to four times a week during college before noticing her alcohol consumption slide throughout her 20s. Then, in 2023, she listened to a podcast that asked, “If we viewed alcohol in the same way we view cigarettes, would we still drink the way we do?”

That accelerated her shift away from drinking and prompted her to research how moderate alcohol consumption could impact her health. Gonzales set a 2024 goal to only drink alcohol 12 times, and only at certain weddings, birthdays and bachelorette parties. The challenge, she said, improved her focus and boosted her stamina, and while she hasn’t set a limit on her alcohol intake for 2025, she wants to drink significantly less.

“I’ve seen firsthand how less alcohol helps me feel and move and think better,” Gonzales said.

During her 12-drink year, Gonzales leaned on mocktails and other nonalcoholic drinks to dodge social pressure at alcohol-focused events, and she wasn’t alone. Between 2022 and 2023, nonalcoholic spirit sales skyrocketed by 29 percent, and IWSR expects the global nonalcoholic beverage industry to grow by more than $4 billion by 2028.

Cannabis legalization may also play a role in decreasing alcohol intake among young people, although data on that remains limited, Creswell said. Young adults with access to legal cannabis use it more and binge drink less, Creswell said, citing a 2020 study that found sharper drops in binge drinking in states that legalized cannabis than in those that didn’t.

‘Drink less, but better’

Some data signals U.S. alcohol consumption is holding up. Average annual expenditures on alcohol, as reported by the BLS, has increased since the pandemic. The country’s per capita alcohol consumption also climbed steadily in the decade leading up to lockdown, analysts said.

But BLS data suggests that older generations drove much of that growth while younger Americans cut back. From 2003 to 2023, average annual spending on alcoholic drinks, adjusted for inflation, not only fell precipitously among people under 25 years old, but also declined 11 percent for people 25 to 34 and dipped almost 3 percent for those 35 to 44, according to the Consumer Expenditure surveys.

Gen Z reached legal drinking age during a time of historically low underage alcohol consumption. Between 2002 and 2021, the number of 16- and 17-year-olds who said they had an alcoholic drink over the past month dropped by 58 percent, according to surveys by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

That means many started drinking later than their parents and may increase their consumption in their mid-20s rather than their early 20s, said Laurence Whyatt, a beverage industry analyst at Barclays. The industry may worry that an 18-year-old who doesn’t drink never will, but that’s “simply not” what the data suggests, Whyatt said.

Rather than drinking less permanently, Gen Z adults may develop their drinking habits later in life, Whyatt said. “People have been waiting until legal drinking age and then consuming a fairly normal amount,” he said.

The data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, after adjusting for inflation, shows double-digit growth in alcohol spending over the past 20 years for people 55 and older.

Alcohol may be less relevant for Gen Z now, but that doesn’t mean they’ll never drink, said Ed Mundy, a beverage industry analyst at Jefferies.

“That same cohort in five or 10 years time may be different, but this all plays to what the industry’s intentionally trying to do in the end - essentially trying to get people to drink less, but better,” he said. “Young people might go out and not have five cocktails, but have one or two nice cocktails and trade up. That’s what the industry is very aware of.”

Rachel Boney said alcohol was central to her social life for 20 years before she limited her consumption. She used alcohol to cope with social isolation during pandemic shutdowns, but it quickly became a crutch, she said.

“I think a lot of people who were already drinking were doubling down and drinking more during covid, and I think it just got a little bit out of hand for some people, and I think I was one of those people,” said Boney, 36.

About a year into the pandemic, the Nashville resident joined thousands of others in the sober curious movement, which encourages people to be more mindful about their drinking without forcing abstinence. That online community, and a renewed commitment to her health, has helped Boney avoid alcohol for nearly seven months, she said.

Alcohol consumption exploded during the pandemic as people spent big on top-shelf liquor and pricey wine, and companies scaled up production to meet unprecedented demand, Whyatt said. But when consumers like Boney emerged from pandemic shutdowns wanting to limit their drinking, it left an excess of inventory.

“The much larger driver of why there isn’t much growth is destocking,” Mundy said. “Finishing off what you’ve got before you buy more at home, retailers finishing off what they’ve got before they buy more, wholesalers finishing off what they’ve got before they buy more.”

Although alcohol costs have risen slower than overall inflation - in U.S. cities, alcohol beverage prices since 2019 have increased 12 percent on average compared with 23 percent for all items - many consumers now opt for ready-to-drink cocktails that cost less than high-end spirits. That shift hit categories such as cognac and scotch especially hard, Whyatt said.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Pernod Ricard acknowledged that stubborn inflation and high interest rates have complicated the alcohol industry’s return to normal after its pandemic boom. But the company believes that return will happen, a spokesperson said: “We remain confident in the gradual improvement in the US spirit market, returning to growth in due course.”