• Posted August 14, 2025

Fewer Americans Are Drinking Alcohol as Health Concerns Rise

Fewer U.S. adults say they drink alcohol, and more now believe that even moderate drinking can harm their health, a new Gallup poll finds.

The survey, conducted in July, found that 54% of Americans drink alcohol — the lowest rate Gallup has recorded in nearly 90 years of tracking. That’s down from most of the past several decades, when at least 60% of Americans said they drank. The previous low was 55% in 1958, Gallup reported.

The poll also found a record 53% of adults consider moderate drinking — one or two drinks a day — is bad for their health. That’s up sharply from 28% in 2015, 39% in 2023, and 45% one year ago.

Younger Americans are the most likely to view moderate drinking as harmful, with about two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds now holding that view, up from about 4 in 10 in 2015. 

Older adults are less likely to agree, but their concerns are growing: About half of those 55 and older now see moderate drinking as risky, compared to 2 in 10 a decade ago, Gallup said.

Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, elaborated on the age differences in an interview with CBS News.

"Older folks may be a little more hardened in terms of the whiplash that they get with recommendations,"  she said. "It may take them a little longer to absorb or accept the information."

Things are different for younger people, Saad observed. 

"For young folks, this is the environment that they've grown up in ... in many cases, it would be the first thing young adults would have heard as they were coming into adulthood," she said.

That earlier belief was based on research using methods that couldn’t prove cause and effect. In recent years, health experts have highlighted strong evidence linking alcohol to serious illnesses, including cancer.

In January, then–U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels on alcohol, noting that alcohol causes about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year in the U.S., more than the 13,500 deaths from alcohol-related car crashes.

The U.S. government’s current dietary guidelines recommend not drinking, or, if you do, limiting intake to one drink a day for women and two for men. New guidelines are expected later this year.

Even among people who drink, many are cutting back. Roughly a quarter of drinkers polled said they had consumed alcohol in the previous 24 hours — a record low. About 40% of respondents said it had been more than a week since their last drink.

Gallup noted that the decline doesn’t seem to be due to people replacing alcohol with marijuana, which is legal in many states. Its use has stayed steady over the past four years.

Young adults used to drink more than anyone else, pollsters noted, but now they drink less than middle-aged and older adults. This continues a long-term drop in alcohol use among young people.

Results of the new poll are based on phone intrviews conducted July 7-21 with a random sample of 1,002 adults living in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

More information

The University of Michigan has more on teens and alcohol.

SOURCES: Gallup, Aug. 13, 2025; CBS News, Aug. 13, 2025