No wonder so many people are in such a bad mood.
A recent Gallup Poll shows that just 54% of American adults drink alcohol, the lowest percentage in 90 years. At least 60% of Americans reported drinking alcohol between 1997 and 2023, with a decline beginning in 2023 among women, Republicans, and both low-income and high-income Americans.
Those who drink are drinking less. The average drinking respondent reports imbibing just 2.8 drinks during the last week compared to 4.5 drinks 10 years ago.
I must have missed this, but several studies published in recent years have pointed to the increased risks of cancer and other diseases, even with just moderate alcohol use. This is directly the opposite of what we’ve been told for decades, that moderate use of alcohol is actually beneficial.
Gallup reports that for the first time, a majority of Americans believe that moderate alcohol consumption is harmful to their health.
What the hell happened? Why, after decades of telling us it was okay to drink in moderation, do we suddenly find ourselves putting alcohol — any alcohol — bad for your health?
Drinking alcohol leads to cardiovascular problems. Except it didn’t use to. “While some older studies suggested potential benefits, more recent research indicates that even moderate drinking can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases like hypertension and coronary artery disease,” reports the Stanford Center on Longevity.
What was wrong with the “older studies”?
Increased risk of liver disease, impact on brain health, and an increased risk of injury from a variety of sources, including autos; all these and a few other risk factors have led the federal government of the United States to tell us that even one or two drinks a day can lead to bad health outcomes.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants cancer warning labels on all booze bottles. Perhaps they should add a skull and crossbones to make sure we all know it’s poison.
Using 2023’s 62% as a baseline (because the 2022 reading of 67% is an outlier), the decline in drinking has been more pronounced among women (down 11 percentage points since 2023, to 51%) than among men (down five points, to 57%). Drinking has also declined 11 points among non-Hispanic White adults, while it has been fairly steady at around 50% among people of color.
Young adults had already become less likely to report drinking alcohol a decade ago, but that trend has only accelerated, with the rate falling from 59% in 2023 to 50% today. This puts their drinking rate below that of middle-aged and older adults, although fewer in those groups are also claiming to drink than did so two years ago.
There has been little difference in recent decades in the percentages of partisans saying they drink alcohol, but that has changed over the past two years, with a sharp drop in reported drinking among Republicans (falling 19 points, to 46%) but not Democrats (holding fairly steady at 61%).
I’m not buying the argument that moderate consumption of alcohol is a health crapshoot. “Moderate” drinking in adults is defined as one drink a day for women and two for men. We’ve been told that alcohol is a “poison” (it is), and in the past, some alcohol consumption — especially red wine — was actually good for you.
Reason’s Emma Camp makes some good arguments why we should ignore the warnings about moderate alcohol consumption anyway.
There are reasons to want people to engage in moderate drinking, even if moderate drinking has overall negative health effects. That’s because a reduction in moderate drinking probably means people are spending less time in the social environments where such drinking occurs—less time at bars, less time at parties, less time going to restaurants with friends. A decline in light drinking could indicate a rise in social isolation in the same way that a decline in cake sales could mean that fewer people are throwing birthday parties. A world where less drinking happens just might be one where people have fewer friends and spend more time alone.
The people and organizations pushing this theory are public health professionals. They include the usual suspects: the CDC, the NIH, university health centers, and the surgeon general’s office.
Public health scientists have determined that the methodology in newer studies on the health effects of moderate drinking is superior to that in previous studies that say it is beneficial. Again, I’m not convinced. How can researchers get something so important so wrong, and other researchers asking the same question get an entirely different answer?
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