Link: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/11/global-alcohol-giants-lose-us830-billion-as-drinking-habits-change/

TIL World’s biggest beer, wine and spirits producers have collectively lost $830 billion in market value over just four years. Changing drinking habits and rising health concerns have hit earnings across the sector. Millennials and Gen Z are also not much interested in alcohol.

The legalization of Marujuana, edibles and young people collectively don’t go to bars anymore, I wonder if the amount of drunk driving has declined.

MILLENNIALS destroying ANOTHER thing! WHY don't they just SPEND the Money we DONT give them on these BAD things that will Make them Feel like CRAP while making US Richer?

-Billionaires!

I went sober for various reasons years ago. I wish I could say it saved me money though, now I spend my vice money on fancy food instead.

I'm all for this. A) It's healthier for everyone involved. B) It is making prices come down for me to buy all that unhealthy stuff for myself.

Most of the people I know are cutting back not because of health or habits, just because everything is so crazy expensive now. I feel like booze has been almost completely priced out of its target demographic.

Oh no, it's definitely the zoomers for this one. Millennials were big on cocktails.

Canada’s boycott of big US manufacturers has helped as well.

What's the word? Thunderbird!

Millenials were also big on the whole craft beer thing (at least in North America, not sure how that trend played out in the rest of the world).

Nah. We stopped buying American, and instead we buy Canada and Scotland and New Zealand alcohol products. It's not a reduction, just a delicious shift.

For me, it was the colon cancer....

Are the worlds largest producers of beer wine and spirits mentioned in this article Canadian? Because if not, I don't see how it's relevant.

If they ARE Canadian....really? Are you sure? There's one that begins with an M thats Canadian. Moltav or something like that. I'd know it if I saw it. Other than that one, I can't think of any Canadian beer.

Scotland is seeing a huge drop in scotch sales, and France is seeing a huge drop in wine sales. Even though the US producers are seeing a bigger drop due to Canada's boycott, the rest of the world is also seeing a drop even accounting for the Canadian shift to their products.

tf you guys mean "were"

Molson

There's lots of craft beers on Canada now. At least, that's most of what I've bought lately but I don't drink very often.

Shout out to Granville Island Winter Ale. Goddam delicious!

I want to say no.....but I don't have any way to know that I'm right. I'd assume the number of young drunk drivers has gone down. And I assume drunk driving will go down drastically once the boomers start their giant death toll numbers. But that'll be over the next 20 years. My mom is 80. My grandma lived to be 103. The youngest boomers are 60.

But again, I have zero clue how right I am.

I've noticed that it feels like a very large proportion of Gen Z and young millennials vape like their lives depend on it. They can't go anywhere without a vape in hand and they're sucking on it every minute or so. I'm curious if the demographic that would be heavy drinkers is now just heavy vapers instead.

Agreed.

is already sitting at your dinner table

Dinner isn't for hours, and you haven't even started yet? That's cool. I'll wait.

I brought a game boy.

I'll see if I can find it, but that "collectively lost $830 billion in market value" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It went down from like 89% to 82% or something. That's how much those fuckers make.

In the case of the craft beer market, it's not nearly as overhyped as it once was.

My uncle is slowly dying from pancreatic cancer thanks to irregular alcohol consumption. So yeah. Let's not get pancreatic cancer or other such things. It's painful. All you gotta do is not drink non foods like alcohol and not breathe non breathable gasses like smoke.

I was on a public transportation city bus, and this guy just took out a vape, and started smoking. I'm like "There's no smoking on the bus", and he just starts laughing and acting like I'm an asshole. Saying vape smoke isn't unhealthy.

I'm not a smoker, but my mom was. Guess who got cancer from second hand smoke, because in the 80s, everyone said "second hand smoke idn't unhealthy".

Yeah, but I'M the asshole for not wanting to breathe vape smoke in a place where it's illegal to vape.

not here, there's at least one craft brewery in every town.

also you made it sound like the past tense applied to the millenials themselves :P

Yeah, while I'm happy that this is making my favorite stuff cheaper, it's still very expensive. Blanton's was selling for $120/bottle just last year if you could even find it in my area, but I can find it in a regular grocery store for $80 now. EH Taylor went from $100/bottle and hard to find to $60 and all over the place. That's WAY more affordable but also still really damn expensive compared to Buffalo Trace (all three of these brands are from the same parent company and from roughly the same recipe and source ingredients).

Scotch is slightly cheaper now, too. Dalmore 15 was selling for $120 last year and is around $100 now. Two years ago, Dalmore King Alexander was $340 but can be found in the grocery store for $280 now.

What I haven't seen yet is a drop in price of Burgundy. I can't afford to pay $300/bottle for a Nuits-Saint-George Gran Cru.

Even looking away from luxury booze brands, the cost of cocktails is also very high. I have to pay $21 for a cocktail at a moderately priced restaurant in my area.

I'm doing my part gif

Craft beer is huge in Australia

I lived in a part of Sydney famous for having dozens of breweries in a relatively small area

I could walk easily around some amazing places, and I could take my dogs to almost all of them

I'm an elder millennial and I hardly ever drink, I know a lot of people like me. It's almost like generalizing is a bad idea.

I really think it's the wealth inequality. People can't afford it.

Yup. But millenials are getting to an age where hangovers are just not worth it, and you get gens are not continuing the slack. All my younger friends use all sorts of substances, but rarely alcohol...

Cocktails are a scam. Most places (and even some of the best places) are using cheap base ingredients, and the end results are gimmicky, boring, and lacking in complexity. At best, the median quality cocktail is nice to look at and features an acceptable balance of sweetness and acidity. A fucking glass of cold juice wins on a head-to-head of those metrics almost every time haha.

What’s the cannabis revenue?

According to the older people from my family, life was so shit that drinking was the only thing they had to drift their mind away from it. Today, things changed a lot. We have a variety of methods to drift away.

I'm gay so like half my friends are addicts and most of them are in recovery and open about the struggles. Oh and me too. Vs smoking weed and California sober, psychedelics, etc - that's where it's all at right now.

Americans are also big, and like 1/8 adults are on GLP-1s.

GLP-1s make the seltzer cans a hell of a lot more appetizing than a heavy/hoppy beer.

I‘d guess minimal change across the globe considering it’s still outlawed almost everywhere.

There may be a lot of craft breweries in Canada now, but if they only sell in Canada and maybe the US border region you're still looking at a fraction compared to even a US-only producer based on population alone.

Unless they are massive, like the scale of something like Budweiser... They're probably not part of the "world's biggest producers".

Oh no the poor drug peddlers. Whatever shall they do? This is an absolute travesty...

This is so terrible that people are no longer damaging themselves with the one drug that every country makes legal.

Are you just copying random posts from TiL on Reddit?

It's because anyone over 30 automatically becomes a boomer. Gen X has been all boomers for a long time and no one noticed. Millennials are critically endangered, but if you donate to my "save the Millennials" fund, we may be able to bring them back from boomerism before it's too late.

Millennials taking credit for doing nothing, story at 11

Are they 100% sure it was booze? My uncle is slowly dying too from pancreatic cancer and part of the theory is if he wasn't drinking beer it was diet cokes.

Anecdotally, I see way more Gen Z’ers smoking cigarettes than millennials. And vaping like you said, but I’m pretty bummed to be seeing cigarettes back so commonly.

The article mentions the largest producers, so I wonder how much of this is people buying from local breweries instead of drinking Budweiser.

My ex spouse took up vaping a couple years back and it basically went from "a few hits on some weekends" to "blowing through massive rips near constantly" in under 6 months. Wild to see. Now them and others they treat it like a permanent fixture if they don't know where their vape is all else halts until they can find it. I've been addicted to various things in my life including alcohol but cigarettes and vapes have always scared me

Granville Island Brewing is owned by Creemore Springs which is owned by Molson Coors.

Ah damn.

Need a law that gets rid of American ownership of Canadian companies.

Sanitation, whether an ACTUAL bot or not, is basically a reddit repost bot, yes.

The internet was revolutionary. No longer do we have to pay exorbitant prices to rent a VHS tape or buy a magazine to escape from the drudgery and repetition of existence.

Now, we can stream porn for free. Or for those who have money to spare, there's 3D VR porn. In fact, there's even video game porn.

Well, there was awhile when you could walk into a brewpub and order a variety of things. Stouts, ESBs, barleywines, porters...then Trump got elected the first time, and all beer became IPAs. They must be cheaper to make or something, but people who like beer that tastes like anything other than dogwood leaves were just fired as customers.