Is hitting the bottle a detriment to one’s health? More Americans than ever think so, with 45% agreeing that it’s unhealthy to drink one or two alcoholic beverages a day—and with young adults more likely than middle-aged or older adults to take this position, according to the results of a new Gallup survey . The high percentage of people who think drinking is bad for one’s health marks a six-point increase over last year and a 17-point increase since 2018, when Gallup last posed the question. That young people are leading the way with this mindset tracks with both Gallup’s recent findings and that of others regarding the drinking habits of millennials and Gen Z, whose alcohol consumption has dropped significantly in recent years.
A study published in May , for example, found that binge drinking was declining among adolescents and early young adults. And between 2002 and 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , prevalence of alcohol use in the past 30 days among 16- and 17-year-olds dropped by 58 percent; among 14- and 15-year-olds, it fell 69 percent. More findings about alcohol behaviors and beliefs About six in 10 U.
S. adults, or 58%, say they occasionally drink, slightly below the historical trend of 63% in Gallup polls since 1939. Those who do drink report, on average, that they had four drinks in the past week, an average that’s held since 1996.
But only 16% of those who do drink say they sometimes overindulge—the fifth co.