Alcohol 📍

The supermarket chain Wegmans is lobbying New York State for permission to sell wine. It is just one moment in New York City’s long, tumultuous, love/hate relationship with alcohol.

Despite the city’s reputation for booze-soaked debauchery, its liquor laws can seem puritanical: Until last year, liquor stores were barred from opening on Christmas Day. The so-called boozy-brunch bill didn’t pass until 2016; before that, restaurants were not supposed to serve alcohol before noon on Sunday.

Gen Zers are drinking less than young people in past generations: about 20 percent less alcohol per capita than millennials did at their age, according to a report from Berenberg Research.

And many are forgoing booze entirely. The share of college-age adults abstaining from alcohol has grown from 20 to 28 percent over the last two decades, a University of Michigan study found.

The shift away from alcohol stems in part from a heightened awareness of the risks that come with drinking, from poor decisionmaking to addiction to negative health impacts.

Young people “are actually learning that alcohol is toxic to humans,” said Charles Smith, an addiction specialist at the American Addiction Centers Recovery First Treatment Center in Hollywood, Fla.