Americans reevaluate their relationship with alcohol as consumption hits record low; more Americans confront health risks of moderate drinking

A growing number of Americans are walking away from the bar, the bottle, and a decades-old assumption that a daily drink is harmless. According to the USA Today website, Gallup finds just 54 percent of US adults now say they drink alcohol, the lowest share in nearly 90 years of polling, a change the pollsters say is tied to rising health concerns about even “moderate” drinking.

Gallup’s Consumption Habits survey found that a majority (53 percent) now considers “one or two drinks a day” bad for health. In comparison, only 6 percent call it good and 37 percent say it makes no difference, a reversal of long-standing public opinion. Women (about 60 percent) are substantially more likely than men (47 percent) to view moderate drinking as unhealthy;

Political division

Democrats and independents are also more likely than Republicans to hold that view. The poll shows declines in drinking across many groups, but especially among younger adults and women. Democrats (58 percent) and independents (55 percent) are more likely than Republicans (44 percent) to support this view.

Sharp rise in deaths

While bars and restaurants were shuttered in 2020, Americans actually drank more, and the human cost soared. National data show deaths involving alcohol rose sharply during the pandemic. Analyses of death certificates counted about 99,017 alcohol-involved deaths in 2020, with that figure rising to roughly 108,791 in 2021. Federal researchers say that, averaged across 2020-2021.

At the same time, survey research documented sustained increases in consumption during 2020. A longitudinal RTI International study sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that, comparing February to November 2020, overall drinks-per-month rose by roughly 39 percent, and the largest relative jump was among women with children under age 5, who reported a 323 percent increase in consumption in that window.

Science and policy have moved, too

The public’s unease has clear anchors in the scientific literature. Low and moderate-risk drinking were associated with higher cancer and all-cause mortality in older adults with certain health or socioeconomic risk factors, a finding that revived debate over whether any regular alcohol use is safe for older people.

Perhaps most consequentially for public awareness, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory in January 2025 underscoring the causal link between alcohol and multiple cancers and urging updated warning labels for alcoholic beverages to note cancer risk explicitly. The advisory characterizes alcohol as a major, preventable contributor to cancer burden in the US and calls for broader public education about those risks.

Public-health and cancer groups have echoed that framing. The American Association for Cancer Research and other organizations estimate that roughly 5-6 percent of US cancers are attributable to alcohol consumption, and thousands of cancer deaths each year can be linked to drinking.

Who’s cutting back

Gallup’s poll shows the decline is not uniform. Drinking has dropped sharply among non-Hispanic White adults while remaining near 50 percent among many people of color. Younger adults and women are leading the retreat from alcohol, while many older drinkers have only recently begun to question moderate use.

Many have increasingly questioned the old narrative that moderate drinking is beneficial for heart health, and have strengthened evidence that even light drinking raises cancer risk. That accumulation of evidence, experts say, helps explain why attitudes have shifted so quickly.