In 2001, Gallup asked "Do you personally, think drinking in moderation--that is, one or two drinks a day--is good for your health, makes no difference, or is bad for your health?" 22% said good, 46% no difference, and 27% bad. They have asked the question a number of times since then, most recently in 2024. The figure shows the balance of opinion (percent good minus percent bad) over time:
It's a clear downward trend--that is, a shift towards seeing moderate drinking as bad for health. More exactly, it seems like a small downward trend until 2018, followed by a larger downward trend. Since the number of observations is small, it's not possible to be sure about the exact timing, but it is clear that there's been a stronger downward trend in "recent" years.
A lot of people say that we no longer have a shared social reality, that people no longer trust authorities but instead just believe what they want to believe. This is an issue on which the desire to come to particular conclusions is strong: people who enjoy the gift of Bacchus will want to believe that moderate drinking is good for you, or at least harmless, while people who have religious objections to drinking will want to believe that it is harmful as well as sinful. Yet there's been a large shift in opinion in a fairly short period of time. There hasn't been a definitive study that's settled the issue, but my impression is that the tone of media coverage has changed: there have been a lot of articles like this one that appeared in the New York Times yesterday, which has the online headline "Evidence Against Drinking has Grown."
Demographic breakdowns aren't available for most of the surveys, but I have them for 2011 and 2024.
2011 2024 change
White +4 -27 -31
NonWhite -8 -53 -45
No Coll -13 -41 -28
Some Coll -9 -38 -29
Coll grad +9 -32 -41
Men +8 -27 -35
Women -13 -44 -31
Dem -2 -46 -44
Rep -6 -29 -23
Ind 0 -36 -36
There has been substantial move in all groups towards saying that moderate drinking is bad for health. The shift is smaller among Republicans than among Democrats: the party difference in 2024 is statistically significant, although not overwhelmingly so (t of about 3). This might reflect lower Republican trust in the media or scientific authorities. But the basic picture is that all kinds of people become more likely to say that moderate drinking is bad for health. Of course, people have more respect for medicine than for other institutions, but with rare exceptions, they only learn about the views of medical experts through the media. That is, even though many people say that they don't trust the media (especially the "corporate media" or "legacy media"), they still generally follow it on issues that aren't the subject of political contestation.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
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