The latest results of the New Zealand Health Survey, released in November, show about one in four adults choose not to drink.<\/p>\n
That was down from about one in five in 2019\/20.<\/p>\n
Among 15-24-year-olds, 70% said they did not drink, down from 77.4% five years ago. There was a year-on-year spike in hazardous drinking at the underage end of this range, but it was still lower than six years ago.<\/p>\n
Hazardous drinking in the adult population overall declined across various measures in the same period.<\/p>\n
Previously, one in five adults was considered a hazardous drinker. Now it\u2019s one in six.<\/p>\n
And the number of adults throwing back six or more drinks in one sitting at least weekly is at 8.2%, down from 12%.<\/p>\n
The NZ Alcohol Beverage Council called this a \u201cgrowing shift towards moderate drinking and healthy lifestyles\u201d, and noted recent Stats NZ data showed alcohol consumption at its lowest per-capita level since 1984.<\/p>\n
Independent market research the council commissioned found more Kiwis consuming low-alcohol beverages.<\/p>\n
The research also measured what was described as a recent trend \u2013 but which sounds suspiciously like the advice mums have dolled out for decades to teens off to their first boozy parties.<\/p>\n
Originating in the United Kingdom, \u201czebra striping\u201d is the terrible new moniker for alternating alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks when socialising.<\/p>\n
About one in five Kiwi consumers said they did this often and half did it sometimes.<\/p>\n
You would bet none called it zebra striping.<\/p>\n
Gimmicky lingo aside, however, a more discerning attitude to hitting the bottle can only be good news for the country.<\/p>\n
The cost of alcohol harm to New Zealand was estimated at $9.1 billion in a 2024 report.<\/p>\n
An Otago University study found that in 2018, more than 900 deaths were attributable to alcohol, plus 29,282 hospitalisations and 128,963 ACC claims. <\/p>\n
With those sobering statistics in mind, here\u2019s an update on Kiwi attitudes to drinking for 2026.<\/p>\n
Not drinking at all is no longer considered mean, and if you are at all inclined towards being a mean drunk, consider making like a zebra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest results of the New Zealand Health Survey, released in November, show about one in four adults…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20784,5263,34384,95,192,45885,14229,31742,36979,13997,6101,29391,80462,117,111,43,139,69,6100,8475,4468,61,2963],"class_list":["post-199943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-alcohol","tag-all","tag-alone","tag-and","tag-are","tag-attitudes","tag-changing","tag-considered","tag-drink","tag-editorial","tag-good","tag-mean","tag-meaner","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-still","tag-thats","tag-thing","tag-to","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}