Alcohol survey shows Australians drinking less alcohol as COVID-19 pandemic eases

New data from the Roy Morgan alcohol consumption report revealed the proportion of Australians who drink alcohol dropped by 1.8 percentage points to 67.9 per cent in the 12 months to June 2022 as the country emerged from the pandemic and multiple lockdowns in 2020-21.

The number of Australians drinking wine, beer and spirits reached pandemic highs during 2021.

However, consumption of RTDs (ready-to-drink) alcohol products has continued to increase and is now at a record high.

In the year to June 2022, 13.6 million Australians aged over 18 consumed alcohol in an average four-week period, down from a pandemic high of 13.9 million a year earlier.

The big rise over the past 12 months has been in the "ready-to-drinks", with 3,349,000 Australians reporting they were consumers - an increase of 3.2 percentage points (+680,000).

The most popular alcohol is still wine, but the number of Australians drinking wine dropped from 9,237,000 (46.3 per cent) to 8,938,000 (44.6 per cent).

Beer has also lost ground from its pandemic highs with 6,666,000 Australians (33.3 per cent) now drinking beer, down 2.3 percentage points (-428,000) from oa year ago. Spirits are the third favourite type of alcohol, with 6,083,000 Australians (30.4 per cent) now drinking spirits, down 2.8 per cent (-538,000) on mid-2021.

The Roy Morgan survey is derived from in-depth interviews with over 60,000 Australians each year.

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