Obligatory NYT headline: “Alcohol poisoning used to be a time honoured pasttime in this small town, but Millennial woke mob took it all away.”
I think at least part of it is due to weed. Both it being legalized and being more popular than it’s ever been in non-legal states. At least for me, smoking weed kills my desire to drink nearly as much. Usually at parties or just hang outs it starts off with a beer or mixed drink or three, then someone breaks out the weed and suddenly I’m nursing my fourth drink for an hour.
Would we not expect sudden changes then? This is a steady decline, not indicating any sudden changes in laws or anything.
Weed legalization hasn’t been sudden though. It’s progressed from medical to decriminalized to legal state by excruciating state.
As this graph is national, it makes sense that there wouldn’t be a cliff because there’s no particular date when we could say weed became legal.
Still not legal in any way here in texasss, and I assume we’ll be the very last of the last to do so. But even here, it’s so easily accessible that a good number of younger people I know tell me they prefer weed to alcohol. In legal states, that tendency must be much higher.
Do we have the same date for individual states? Perhaps some with and some without legal weed?
Legalization efforts have been piecemeal throughout the country, and still less than half the states have direct recreational access. I’m sure it’s a factor, but until we have federal recreational legalization, we should see a downward trend instead of a drop.
Weed has had a steady increase in popularity since like the 70s. I kind of agree, I’m sure there should be some cliff in the states where it was legalized, or if not my theory is bunk. It’s only based on an anecdote tbf.
Edit: actually if we want any theory it seems pretty clear that the beginning of the drop off started right about at the market crash of 2008.
Also interesting that female rates stayed steady to the point that they’ve actually overtaken male rates.
Interesting. Personally, it doesn’t kill my desire to drink when I do decide to go on a bender. If anything, for me it gets easier to drink when there’s weed involved, as I just don’t enjoy most alcoholic beverages, taste wise. However, since access to weed got easier and I don’t have to hide anymore, when the occasion to get a buzz happens, I just prefer the weed high to being drunk, and I can skip the hangover.
I think it’s also in part due to easier access at an earlier age compared to alcohol and the rapid increase in quality. Weed is easy to grow, and even kids have been selling it to their friends in school for forever. But gone are the days of buying skunk weed off some dude you barely know. There’s 13 year olds out there today smoking stuff of a quality that the hippies could only dream of.
Plus, when it comes to drugs, as a late Millennial, I knew a lot more kids who became heroin addicts as teenagers than alcoholics - and they started their drug use years before showing up on this graph. During Bush’s presidency, heroin from Afghanistan became a lot more easily accessible on the east coast, and I used to say when I was a teenager that heroin was more popular with my generation because it was too awkward to go to the bar and see your friends’ parents day drinking.
I’m not sure how it all factors in but there’s evidence that teenagers are using weed less: https://coloradosun.com/2024/06/26/youth-marijuana-use-colorado-legalization/
The graph maker certainly seems to think so at least
the shift to cannabis and other alternatives is here
I’m shocked there’s no bump in 2020-2021. Many people I know, myself included, started drinking so much more during the pandemic.
These are also self reported numbers.
I know I wasn’t telling people how much I was drinking during the pandemic
I wonder if that could be the entire cause od the drop, the stigma became greater so men just lie about it.
Also how are we defining “binge” drinking
I found people went one of two ways. I know plenty of people who drank more, but also plenty of people (myself included) who basically went cold turkey for two years. I don’t enjoy drinking by myself so I didn’t
In the 18-25 age bracket though?
Same
It went from 50% to 30% which is less but the scale makes you feel it is much lower
Yeah, graphs that are cut off is misleading graphs 101.
Yeah and also its a decline in male binge drinking. Female hasn’t really changed after a short term uptick.
that’s still an overall decline.
I enjoy being intoxicated all day and not having a raging headache the day(s) after. Weed 4 Life!
Not sayig drinking is fine, but you sound like you’re dehydrated. If you can stomach water whilr drinking it reduces the negative effects
The post was about binge drinking, which is a specific kind of “drinking”? I was comparing the differences between “binging” both drugs and the effects they cause after the fact.
I gotta disagree here. What qualifies as a “binge” to a scientist and, say, a university student (or even an adult that occasionally drinks) are quite different things. You can science “binge” with like 3 or 5 drinks in a night with no ill effect at all by being sure to drink water or mixing with water, you just can’t do it in 20 mins before bed.
You may also get a hangover from weed, but it isn’t as bad as the one from alcohol.
It looks more like the correct headline is binge drinking among men drops to the same level as women’s binge drinking. The red line ends very close to where it starts.
That’s a very good point.
Now do the UK.
Would be interesting to compare and contrast with a country that doesn’t have legal weed
Dunno about the rest of the UK but here in Scotland £100 is s night out
In Manchester here, pretty much the same if you include transport and a kebab.
More like £150-200 if you want to drink nice and get mortal
I work with students a lot in the UK, and there has been a real shift in attitudes towards alcohol. Yes, they will still go out drinking, but no where near the extent previous generations have. Part of it will be that the government paid for my and my predecessors education, and even given adjustments for timescale, booze was sooooo much cheaper then than now.
I’m in the 18-25 demographic. I don’t binge drink cuz tummy hurt :(
Never been a fan, spiking my two quarts of iced tea with a shot of something strong and delicious is always the way to go.
Tastes good, no hangover, mild buzz is easy to maintain, and enough to share if it’s that kind of night.
As a non-drinker that seems like a lot, OTOH, I have spent a lot on liquor for cooking so…
It’s depends if that’s from a store or a bar/restaurant. You can spend $100 on drinks at one dinner in NY if you’re taking someone out. Two people at $8-$15 a drink plus tip adds up fast.
What happened to the women in '15/'16 lol
Binge drinking in celebration of first female president. Then binge drinking because Trump became president instead?
Exactly
I don’t live in a civilized state with legal weed, but I can get the hemp derived delta 9 gummies at any smoke shop, and they do a damn fine job (until Ken Paxton gets a hard-on for criminalizing them anyway)
Since I’ve had easy access to cannabis that I don’t have to smoke, my desire to drink has plummeted.
I’m not gonna tell you that I’ve quit drinking. I’m not even gonna tell you that I’ve quit binge drinking.
But I am gonna tell you that I was once that guy who centered his entire existence on “when can I start drinking?”
Today, without any interventions, without any criminal charges, without any AA, without any conscious decision, I’ve somehow become entirely indifferent to alcohol.
I’ll buy a twelve pack of beer here and there or a bottle of whiskey. Used to be either would be gone the next day. Now it’ll take months (plural) to get through either one.
Downside: I’ve been a whole lot less social without the lubrication of alcohol. Weed doesn’t make me social. It puts me to sleep.
Upside: I’ve pretty much ceased all alcohol related bad decisions. No more sorting through texts from the previous night or having to apologize.
Really big upside: No hangovers
Young people don’t have my decades of experiences to arrive where I am today. Seems like they’ve found the equilibrium without first having to pay to price of alcohol consequences, and good for them.
The alcohol business has known this, and they’re one of the biggest opposition to legalized weed behind the scenes.
Is that vos everyones too busy trying to feed themselves they can’t afford to get drunk.
No, economic declines, including all the way into famine tend to increase rates of alcoholism.
The scale of the graph is a bit misleading though.
… what’s wrong with the scale?
E: Apparently people just going through life looking at graphs ignoring everything on the graphs except LINE GO DOWN AND UP!!!
It’s only showing the range from 60% to 30%, which makes the 20% drop in male binge drinking rates look more like an ~80% drop to near-zero unless you pay close attention to the scale.
… how is a linear scaled graph on both the X and Y axis misleading when the point of the graph is to show change over time and percentage within a small range of about 25% - 55%? The extra 70% is useless.
A Y axis graph going from 0 to 100 results in a squashed graph that’s hard to read.
Do you just read graphs without looking at the scale or something? It literally has the data points listed on each fucking dot FFS lol.
There is literally, not even metaphorically, nothing misleading about this graph.
Both of you quit using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.
This seems an… overly-vitriolic response.
Also you’re wrong. :P
Look at it this way: in the context of the data being shown here, the relevant reference points are 0% and (arguably) 100%, or at least a point somewhere equidistant from the top of the line as the ~30% low point of the line is to zero. Casually glancing at the chart, a viewer who doesn’t take time to look at the scale and the labeled points would take away:
A large majority of college-age men used to binge drink, and now almost none do!
Instead of what the data is actually showing, which is
Half of college-age men used to binge drink and now only three in ten do, while about a third of college-age women have consistently binged.
I don’t think the chart designers are being intentionally misleading, but cutting out half of the 0%-100% range means that the graphics are telling a different story than the labels are, and outside the context of a scientific paper not everybody is going to take the time to scrutinize the labels. Omitting the high and low ends of the range also exaggerates the difference between the two lines, since the graph coincidentally cuts off just below the relatively flat line for female binge drinking right after the line for male binge drinking crosses it on the right.
Besides which, for the purposes of the story showing at least the range from 0%-60% wouldn’t obscure the overall trend – there’s not a lot of noise in the data, and barring the odd spike in female binge-drinking between '14-'15 – that critically, doesn’t appear to be the subject the of article this comes from – there aren’t any smaller-scale trends or oddities in the data that demand scrutiny. Squashing the Y-axis a bit to tell a truer story about the absolute values of the data wouldn’t obscure the message of the graph in any meaningful way.
the relevant reference points are 0% and (arguably) 100%
… The relevant reference points are the ones in the graph which absolutely should be tailored to the dataset. Not ones you arbitrarily prefer.
but cutting out half of the 0%-100% range means that the graphics are telling a different story than the labels are
… Again, you deciding that the graph should be 0-100% is just… Pedantically dumb lol.
It’s literally not misleading.
You jumping to conclusions by really putting the ass in assumptions without reading is just bad comprehension skills.
There’s apparently a similar story for the amount of sex younger people are having. I’ve always attributed the story to the internet and social media. IE, Younger people are just getting their “fix” from and are addicted to something else and aren’t bored in the same way older generations were when they were young.
That would fit. Trend lines start dropping around the time that smart phones really started to be good and smartphone use actually become a viable passtime
Yep, along with Facebook becoming huge (~'08-09) with the (male) trend line starting to drop, by my eye, around '10.
Bingo. I feel like I’ve seen charts lately of that same age group hanging out in person less too. Ain’t the same getting hammered alone.
Can’t post if you’re shit faced.
Now add other drugs to the chart
