A record low level of Americans drink, and a majority now say alcohol is bad for your health
Even among people who do drink, the poll found that people are also drinking less.
A record low percentage of Americans say they drink alcohol and the major say it's not healthy, according to a new poll. (Photo credit: d3sign/Moment RF/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
(CNN) — A record low number of Americans are drinking, according to a new Gallup poll released this week. Just 54% of Americans said they consume alcohol at all.
Gallup has been tracking Americans’ drinking behavior since 1939, and their views of the health implications of drinking since 2001. For the first time, a majority of Americans – 53% – said that moderate drinking, defined as one or two drinks per day, is bad for your health.
“This is a message that those of us in public health have been advocating for a long time,” said Dr. Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who studies trends in alcohol consumption. “And so it’s certainly heartening to see that that message is really seems to be penetrating in the American public.”
Even among people who do drink, the poll found that people are also drinking less. A record low 24% of drinkers said they had a drink in the past 24 hours, while 40% said it was more than a week since they last imbibed – the highest figure Gallup has recorded since 2000. The poll was conducted in July.
Alcohol consumption surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, then began to decline more recently. It’s unclear whether changing attitudes are driving the change in drinking, but the drop spans across age groups. Gen Z drinks less than older generations, but adults age 35 to 54 have reduced their drinking by 10 percentage points since 2023 and those 55 and older by five.
Evidence has been mounting against alcohol consumption because of its health risks, negating a decades-long perception that some moderate drinking could be beneficial to health.
On Thursday, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology released updated blood pressure guidelines that urged people to abstain from alcohol, rather than recommending a limit of 2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink per day for women. And earlier this year, former US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned that alcohol consumption can increase cancer risk and called for an updated health warning label on alcoholic beverages.
Federal officials are currently revisiting long-standing advice on alcohol consumption in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a policy document that sets nutrition standards for everything from school lunches to public health messaging. The current guidelines drinking – a limit of two drinks or less per day for men, and one per day for women – have been the same since 1990.
For the 2025–2030 cycle, the guidelines’ advisory committee declined to review the recommendations on alcohol consumption and instead deferred to two separate evidence reviews, one led by the Department of Health and Human Services and another by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Both reports concluded that higher levels of alcohol consumption were associated with increased risk of certain types of cancer but they stopped short of recommending specific intake limits.
The USDA and HHS guidelines are expected to be released by the end of the year. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to release simpler, slimmed-down dietary guidelines and well before the deadline.
“Certainly, the scientific evidence that we have would support lowering the recommended alcohol intake for Americans below what it is now. Whether the dietary guidelines will shift to reflect the science that we have remains to be seen,” Keyes said.
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