Beer Marketer's Insights - College Drinking Way Down This Fall, But Cigarette and Cannabis Use 2-3x as Common

As the fall semester got going at colleges and universities across the US, just 15% of a large sample of mostly first-year students reported any alcohol consumption in the past 2 weeks, down by more than half since 2016, according to a new report. Further, "alcohol abstinence has more than doubled since 2016," from 34% to 68%, Vector Solutions, a provider of educational platforms to colleges, wrote in a report released this month. That's all good news for a cohort that's 80% underage. But some more stunning stats show up in responses about other substances. These students were twice as likely to smoke cigarettes in the past two weeks than drink and three-times as likely to use e-cigarettes or cannabis. As recent drinking plummeted in the past decade, the prevalence of cannabis use tripled, cigarette use quadrupled and reported e-cigarette use soared by 7x. In addition to a "clear downward trend in alcohol consumption," the report highlights age-based differences in reported use, hinting at the same delay in young adults taking up drinking seen in other surveys. Vector also found an even sharper drop in heavy drinking behaviors among students, like recent binge drinking, a problem once seen as intractable. But again, fast increases in the use of other substances complicates the picture. "Both the landscape of college campuses and substance use among college students have undergone significant transformation in recent years," Vector noted, hinting towards a need to expand educational efforts to a broader set of subjects.Large Sample, Unusual Source This data comes from a very different kind of source than the gold standard, national surveys we often report on, so some wariness is warranted. Vector Solutions provides a wide range of educational services, but touts over 2,000 clients in higher education with over 10 million annual learners. The 2025 results for this report are based on responses from over 832,000 students at 723 institutions, who completed one of Vector's online learning modules about alcohol, substance use, mental health and more.These courses are typically (but not always) given to first year students within 6-8 weeks of arriving on campus, Vector explains. This sample skewed female (57%), white (64%) and age 18 (51%). While not nationally representative of all young adults by any stretch, Vector makes no claims about whether or not the sample is representative of all college students in 2025, nor how the sample may have changed between 2016 and 2025.10-Point Drops in Rare, Moderate Drinking; High Risk Drinking Down by 2/3 The huge jump in reported abstinence from fall 2016 to fall 2025 is just the first part of the story. Vector also tracked big changes among "nondrinkers" (no alcohol in the past two weeks, but some in the past year) and "moderate drinkers" (no more than 3 drinks on the heaviest drinking day in the past two weeks among female respondents, 4 among males). Both groups contracted by 10 points since 2016 in this sample, with the prevalence of nondrinkers falling from 27% to 17% and moderate drinkers dropping from 19% to 9%.What Vector describes as "high-risk drinking" declined even more substantially. The group includes two separate drinking patterns based on consumption during the heaviest drinking day in the past two weeks: heavy episodic drinking (HED or binge drinking, 4-7/5-9 drinks among female/male respondents) and "problematic drinkers" (8+/10+ drinks). From 2016 to 2025, the proportion of students reporting HED fell from 13% to 5%, while the group of "problematic drinkers" shrank from 5% to just 1%, the report shows. So in total, the size of this "high risk" group contracted by 2/3 from 18% to 6% in less than 10 years.Huge Uptick in Cannabis, E-Cigs Since 2016; "Other" Drugs More Common than Alcohol So just 15% of these college students reported any alcohol consumption in the past two weeks this fall, down from 37% in 2016. Yet over the same period, the prevalence of cannabis use tripled from 14% to 47%. So recent cannabis use went from being less than half as common as drinking to 3x as prevalent.E-cigarette use is just as common as cannabis among this sample, but skyrocketed from just 7% in 2016. At that time, standard cigarette smoking was just as uncommon, reported by 7% of students surveyed by Vector. But suddenly, it's twice as common as drinking at 30%. In fact, "other" drugs &mdash; including a wide array of opiates, stimulants, hallucinogens and more &mdash; were more common than drinking in this sample, reported by 21% of respondents, up from 8% in 2016.Alcohol Abstention, Cannabis Use Less Common Among Older Students Under 30% of these 832K students were age 20 or older when responding to Vector's questions this fall, which assuredly skewed results. For instance, while 71% of students aged 19 and younger reported complete abstinence from alcohol, that number dropped to 47% among students aged 20 and older. That older cohort was also significantly more likely than the younger group to say they drank in the past year, but not in the past two weeks (26% vs 16%). And they were 2.5x more likely to be "moderate drinkers" (20% vs 8%). So like other surveys, this report suggests that young adults hold off on drinking until they are of legal age or later.The opposite is true for cannabis. Just over half of the 19 and younger cohort reported recent cannabis use, compared to 37% of the older group. Rates of cigarette and e-cigarette use were roughly similar, landing within 2-3 points of each other. Vector found no real variation based on sex, at least when it comes to alcohol. Yet, female respondents were slightly less likely to report cannabis use than males (46% vs 51%), quite a bit less likely to report smoking cigarettes (26% vs 35%), but far more likely to use e-cigarettes (52% vs 41%). The reverse is true for "other" drugs, which males were 3x more likely to report (29% vs 11%).But Why? Heightened Concern About Alcohol; Belief-Behavior Disconnect Vector also asked students "which of the following reasons are important" when they choose not to drink. This year, 83% said "I'm going to drive," the top result each year. Then too, two-thirds said they "don't need it to have fun," reported by 67%, with just slightly fewer (64%) "concerned about [their] health," which ticked up in prevalence more noticeably this year. The other top reason: drinking "interferes with schoolwork or responsibilities," named by 57% of the sample this fall. Far fewer students report concern that "people would disapprove" (38%) or that "my friends don't" drink (31%).What about cannabis? Health was the top concern there, but less than half the sample cited it, 15 points lower than those worried about health when it comes to alcohol. A similar 46% said they "don't need [cannabis] to have fun," 21 points lower than the comparable response for alcohol. And Vector found a huge 52-point gap between the 80+% of folks who won't drink because they're going to drive and the 31% who say the same about cannabis.Then too, authors highlight a "critical gap between health literacy and behavioral choices." In fact, "students demonstrate remarkably high health risk awareness." A large majority, 72% of the sample, agree that "cannabis use can have harmful effects on one's mental and physical health." An even greater 84% agree that "smoking anything, including cannabis, can be harmful to my lungs," the same size as the group who agrees that "vaping has significant health risks." And yet, as the report acknowledges, that set of beliefs "stands in stark contrast to actual usage patterns."Cheers,

College Drinking Way Down This Fall, But Cigarette and Cannabis Use 2-3x as Common

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