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California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

389 points · 987 comments · randycupertino

  1. alexandre_m · · focus · HN ↗
    > while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns

    My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.

    It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.

    1. silisili · · focus · HN ↗
      That's what big tech wanted, looks like they succeeded. Hard to shove targeted ads into the eyeballs of people socializing with one another.
      1. popularonion · · focus · HN ↗
        US politicians have been at war against teenage drinking since the 1980s when the minimum drinking age was raised. Gen Z social trends helped it along, but this is the desired outcome of bipartisan policy going back decades.
        1. californical · · focus · HN ↗
          More than half of Gen Z is over the legal drinking age now, I’m not sure teen drinking is it
          1. NewJazz · · focus · HN ↗
            But lower teen drinking can lead to lower lifelong drinking. Habits formed during those years have inertia.
          2. TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
            With US legal drinking age being 21, this eats into drinking at university/drinking after work, which is very much where bulk of socializing for young adults happens. Can't imagine it's not hugely affecting adulthood habits.
            1. kortilla · · focus · HN ↗
              Eh, 21 limit was in place for all millennials and most of Gen X. And millennials drink like fish.
        2. seizethecheese · · focus · HN ↗
          [delayed]
        3. johnnyanmac · · focus · HN ↗
          All thanks to crashing the economy and making the act of spending $15 on a low quality beer untenable for young adults giving 60+% of their income to rent.

          Alcohol tax would have been a simpler and much less destructive means of achieving such a goal, but I guess breweries can't lobby when everything else is collapsing too.

          1. FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
            When they introduced the higher alcohol tax here in Australia back in 2006(ish), all it did was push us to find ways to make it ourselves. Went from cheap to unbelievably cheap but completely unregulated. Who knows what the alcohol content of some of that stuff was. There are some vague fuzzy nights from that period.
          2. jeltz · · focus · HN ↗
            You see the same trend in countries without a crashing economy. The economy is not the main reason.
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