Livingston, Vieira and Vashishtha explore whether the widely established declines in adolescent drinking have continued as these cohorts age into young adult. They compile key trends from surveys conducted across twelve countries, providing the first systematic attempt to assess trends in drinking for people in early adulthood. The data highlight declining drinking for young adults across many countries since the early 2000s, although there remain significant inconsistencies in the global trends. Importantly, the data collated demonstrate the diversity of approaches to measurement of drinking in adult populations—we argue that the development of consistent and comparable approaches to data collection and measurement is critical to improve the reliability of estimates in future.