by Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
For more than twenty-five years, I have addressed alcohol policy in North Carolina and across the nation. During much of that time, I often felt like John the Baptist in the wilderness — warning, pleading, and reasoning with a culture deeply attached to its drinking habits, while facing the steady resistance of one of the most powerful lobbies in the halls of government.
Alcohol has never been a popular subject for reform. It is woven deeply into American social life, shielded by powerful industry interests, and defended by longstanding cultural assumptions about “moderate” use. For many years, those of us raising concerns about alcohol’s health and social consequences were treated as outdated, overly moralistic, or simply out of touch.
But times are changing.
As the new year begins, millions of Americans participate in “Dry January” – a voluntary month-long break from alcohol that invites people to reassess their relationship with drinking. For many, the results have been striking: better sleep, improved mood, sharper thinking, weight loss, higher energy, fewer headaches, and greater overall focus. What starts as a thirty-day experiment often becomes a longer journey – Dry Every Month of the Year – as people discover that life without alcohol is not a sacrifice but a gain.
This movement is not confined to a few wellness enthusiasts. Surveys indicate that as many as one in four American adults participate in Dry January. The driving force behind this shift is especially significant: younger generations. Gen Z and younger Millennials are drinking less than any generation before them, and many are choosing abstinence.
The data confirms what many of us on the front lines of alcohol policy reform have long sensed. According to Gallup’s most recent national survey, only 54 percent of U.S. adults now report consuming alcohol. That’s the lowest level in nearly ninety years. Among young adults ages 18 to 34, the number has fallen to just 50 percent, down from 72 percent two decades ago. Even among those who do drink, consumption is declining sharply, with the average number of drinks per week now at 2.8 — the lowest level Gallup has recorded in 30 years.
Perhaps most remarkable is that for the first time, a majority of Americans now believe that even moderate drinking is bad for one’s health, 53% to be exact.
This is not a fringe opinion. It is the emerging mainstream.
The trend is not confined to the United States. In Australia, researchers have found that young people born between 1997 and 2012 are seventeen times more likely to abstain from alcohol than Baby Boomers. In the United Kingdom, average alcohol consumption per person has fallen dramatically over the past two decades. Across the developed world, the culture of heavy drinking is quietly but decisively losing its grip.
For someone who has labored in this field for a quarter-century, I can say with gratitude and humility: we are no longer in the wilderness. We are standing at the threshold of real reform.
This progress is not the work of any one person or organization. It is the fruit of decades of persistence by public-health professionals, community leaders, researchers, families, faith groups, recovery advocates, and concerned citizens who refused to accept the myth that alcohol’s harms are inevitable and unchangeable.
Yet this moment also carries risk.
Just as public awareness and behavior are shifting in a healthier direction, the federal government recently softened its guidance on alcohol consumption. The new 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines remove specific limits on daily drinking and eliminate earlier warnings about increased mortality risk. Predictably, the alcohol industry has already greeted these changes with much “relief.”
Meanwhile, the science continues to move in the opposite direction. Recent federal and medical reports have confirmed that no level of alcohol consumption is risk-free, with even low levels increasing the risk of cancer, heart disease, and premature death. The long arc of evidence now resembles the early days of tobacco reform, when cultural habits outpaced political courage.
The question before us is whether this generation will finish the work that has been diligently carried on for decades.
The cultural winds are shifting. The people are discovering the truth for themselves. The next chapter of reform will depend on whether leaders have the resolve to follow where the evidence and the public are already headed.
For the first time in many years, those of us who have long warned about alcohol’s hidden costs are no longer speaking to a brick wall. The culture itself is starting to catch on and agree. Once society’s conscience starts moving, no industry and no lobby can hold it back forever.
Rev. Mark H. Creech is the former Executive Director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, past President of the American Council on Alcohol Problems, and currently Director of Government Relations for Return America.
