Samuel Mann always kept a few bottles of nonalcoholic beer behind the counter of a bar he once managed. They didn’t look good, and they didn’t taste much better. Hardly anyone ever asked for one.
Today, nonalcoholic beers, wines, and spirits are a billion-dollar industry. And Mann, now an economist at RAND, recently found they might be changing how young people relate to alcohol. His study is the latest in a long line of RAND research tracking drinking trends in an effort to help promote safer habits.
“What we really saw,” he said, “is that the consumption of these products seems to be helping people transition away from alcohol use.”
Mann and his team surveyed hundreds of people in their mid-20s who reported drinking alcohol. Nearly one-quarter of them reported also having a low- or no-alcohol drink—beer, wine, or spirit—in the past month. That alone was a surprise. The researchers didn’t expect young people to be drinking these drinks in such high numbers.
For some young people, low- and no-alcohol drinks could be a socially acceptable way to cut back. For others, though, they were just another option.
Those who were drinking low- and no-alcohol drinks were more likely to say they didn’t feel as much motivation to drink alcohol in social settings. A year later, the researchers found, they were roughly 5 percentage points more likely to say they had abstained from alcohol for the past year. Even those who hadn’t abstained were somewhat more likely to say they had recently been trying to quit alcohol, although the differences were small.
The findings suggest that, for some young people, low- and no-alcohol drinks could be a socially acceptable way to cut back. For others, though, they were just another option. Most of the people in the study continued to drink alcohol alongside their zero-proof beers, wines, and spirits. The researchers found no overall reductions in heavy binge drinking or alcohol-related consequences, either.
“These products are suddenly everywhere,” Mann said. “But the research has really not kept pace to help us understand how people are using them. Our key finding is that they appear to be one tool that people are using to help them move away from alcohol consumption.”
But he added: “It’s not that they’re helping every drinker consume slightly less. It looks more like they’re supporting a subset of people who want to change their relationship with alcohol more fundamentally.”
Young adults like those in RAND’s study have long been a focus of concern because of their alcohol habits. Nearly one-third report a recent bout of binge drinking, for example. But the trends are shifting: Almost exactly as many say they don’t drink alcohol at all. Young adults in a recent Gallup poll were much more likely than older adults to describe even moderate drinking as a health risk.
RAND has been tracking shifts like that for decades. Its research has helped public health agencies better understand how tweens, teens, and twentysomethings think about alcohol, and what messages will resonate with them. One recent study showed, for example, that the promise of better health might motivate more young people to participate in alcohol-free challenges like Dry January.
RAND has a unique data set for that research. In 2008, senior behavioral scientist Elizabeth D’Amico surveyed thousands of Southern California middle schoolers who had participated in a voluntary alcohol and drug program. She and other researchers decided to keep following the same kids, long after the effects of that program had faded.
They tracked their drinking habits through high school. They asked about DUI arrests and the impact of marijuana advertising as the group moved into adulthood. The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has funded the research, which D’Amico still oversees.
Those middle schoolers are now twentysomethings—the same twentysomethings who helped RAND clarify the role that no- and low-alcohol drinks play on their nights out.
