Why are so many people in so many countries around the world drinking less? Tim Naimi on the spread of sobering research about alcohol’s adverse health effects, the tightening of economic pressures, and the myth of the moderate European drinker.
When England’s national football team lost the UEFA Euro final to Spain last July—after having lost the previous Euro final to Italy in 2020—a brawl erupted outside a pub in Solihull, a town on the outskirts of Birmingham. Dozens of men and women traded blows. It was a big, drunken mess. But spectacularly bad scenes like this, along with everyday bar fights, are becoming rarer. Across England and Wales, 65 percent of a notable decline in violence from 2014 to 2024 is on account of men from 18 to 30 not getting into as many fights as they used to. The biggest factor? Less drinking.
Alcohol is losing its grip on British youth. This year, 28 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds reported teetotaling—a 10 percent jump from 2014. The nonalcoholic beer Guinness 0.0 has become a major earner for Guinness’s parent company, Diageo. Sales of low- and no-alcohol products in the U.K. rose 47 percent last year.
The shift is global, especially among younger generations, whose alcohol consumption has dropped across most high-income countries over the last couple of decades. The number of U.S. 16- and 17-year-olds who said they’d had a drink in the past month has fallen by 58 percent since 2002. A 2023 Gallup poll found the share of adults under age 35 who say they drink dropped 10 percentage points—from 72 percent to 62 percent—since 2003.
Finland, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Lithuania, and more report declines in drinking rates, too, and nearly half of adults worldwide say they’re cutting back or giving up alcohol altogether. U.S. alcohol sales dropped 3 percent in the first half of 2024. Spirits, wine, and beer sales are all down. A fixture of human culture for millennia, alcohol’s role in society is shrinking.
Why?
Tim Naimi is the director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, a professor in the university’s Division of Medical Sciences, and a physician and alcohol epidemiologist with the Boston Medical Center. Naimi says the dynamics behind this shift aren’t simple—and neither are their implications. We can point to a whole set of factors, from better health awareness to economic pressures to post-pandemic adjustments. Yet none of it obviously establishes a lasting, long-term trend.
Young people may be drinking less now, but it’s a question as to whether they stay that way as they hit their thirties and forties. And while alcohol companies continue positioning themselves to capture the no- and low-alcohol market, they’re not exactly conceding defeat on alcohol. What might look like surrender is just as plausibly a way to keep potential drinkers bonded to their brands until habits break …
Allison Braden: How would you describe the most significant global trends you’re seeing in alcohol consumption?
Tadas Petrokas
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