Americans Are (Still) Drinking Less than Ever Before

In a new Gallup poll, 54% of Americans said they drink alcohol, tying last year’s record low. —Getty Images Americans continue to drink less alcohol than ever before, according to a new Gallup poll .

Only 54% of U.S. adults surveyed by the analytics firm in July said they ever drink alcohol —the same share as last year and the lowest recorded since Gallup began surveying Americans on this topic in 1939, says Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research.

“We saw a significant decline in people’s use of alcohol last year, but whether that was a one-time reaction or a trend, we had to wait and see,” Saad says.

“This year’s result tells us that whatever is happening out there is a sustained change.

Drinking has gone down across all age groups.” More public awareness of alcohol’s health risks could be prompting Americans to drink less, the poll results suggest.

A little more than half of Americans surveyed this year said that alcohol is “bad for health,” compared to the less than 30% of people who said that a decade ago; and 86% of people polled said they had heard of recent studies about the long-term health effects of alcohol—a 7% increase from 2024.

Drinking alcohol has been linked to several forms of cancer, as well as higher risks of liver and heart disease, among other health effects.

“The decline in alcohol use coincides with a sharp increase in concern about the health risks of drinking,” Saad says. https://x.com/Gallup/status/2090452609316335964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw But researchers who study alcohol say the poll results don’t provide a complete picture of alcohol use in America.

While drinking might be declining overall, alcohol remains the country’s second-deadliest drug, behind tobacco.

Alcohol kills about 178,000 people yearly, and harmful drinking remains a challenge for many people.

“Many people are changing their attitudes towards drinking and intoxication for health reasons, which means that the number of people who say they drink may be declining because lighter drinkers who are more health conscious and more capable of changing their drinking are maybe choosing to cut back or not drink at all,” says Thomas Babor, a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine who studies alcohol and alcohol addiction.

“But the rates of drinking and drinking problems remain unacceptably high” among some groups, including college students and older people, Babor says.

“The big picture is: alcohol consumption is one of the biggest risk factors for chronic diseases and many other health conditions.” According to the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 44% of U.S.