The past five years have felt like a sea change in how the US public thinks about alcohol. Although health researchers have long known the substance is literally a toxin that can cause cancer, most people did not appear to be taking those risks seriously. Just a few years ago, the percentage of Americans who drank was about as high as it had ever been.
But now that's finally starting to change. Surveys suggest more people are aware of alcohol’s health risks, there is more widespread agreement that even moderate drinking can be a danger to your health — and people are altering their behavior accordingly. As Bryan Walsh wrote in the latest edition of his Good News newsletter, the percentage of Americans who reported drinking reached an all-time low in 2025, the lowest since Gallup began asking people about their habits in the 1930s.
Neither Bryan nor I, who has also reported on these trends, are trying to convince everyone to cut off all alcohol consumption; the occasional drink is a pretty negligible health risk in the grand scheme of things. But it has taken a lot of medical research and public health advocacy to get more people to take seriously the risks of drinking every day or multiple times per week, even if you are only having one or two drinks at a time. But it appears we are finally making a dent.
Less drinking is going to mean more life; alcohol-related causes kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. That is the kind of unameliorated good news that we hope to highlight in Good News. Though the world often looks grim these days, it is important to recognize that we are making progress on longstanding challenges. Alcohol is a particularly heartening example.
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—Dylan Scott, senior correspondent
