This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Policies to reduce youth alcohol consumption should target all ages

Alcohol policies that target all age groups are more likely to decrease the likelihood for youth alcohol consumption when compared with policies aimed specifically at youth, according to recent study findings.

“These findings suggest that efforts to reduce youth drinking should incorporate population-based policies to reduce excessive drinking among adults as part of a comprehensive approach to preventing alcohol-related harms,” Ziming Xuan, ScD, SM, MA, of the departments of community health sciences and biostatistics at Boston University School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote.

Because an association between the combined effectiveness and implementation of multiple existing alcohol policies and youth drinking has not been examined, Xuan and colleagues wrote, they set out to assess Alcohol Policy Scale (APS) scores. These measurements gauged the strength of 29 state-level alcohol policy environments by collecting and evaluating data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey on high school students biennially between 1999 and 2011.

The researchers hypothesized that stronger alcohol policy environments are inversely associated with youth drinking, partially explained by adult drinking. They found that a 10 percentage point increase in APS score points was associated with 8% and 7% decreases in the odds for youth drinking and youth binge drinking, respectively.

Moreover, a subgroup of population-oriented policies was independently associated with decreased odds for youth alcohol consumption (adjusted OR = 0.94; 95% CI, 0.92–0.97) and youth binge drinking (aOR = 0.96; 95% CI, 0.94–0.99). The correlation between population-oriented scores and youth-oriented scores was r = 0.51 (P < .01) across the 238 state-year strata, according to the researchers.

“This is the first study to assess the relationship between the alcohol policy environment and alcohol consumption among high school students in the United States,” Xuan and colleagues wrote. “These findings are relevant to policy debates about the best way to prevent and reduce underage drinking, and about the importance of comprehensive strategies that also include policies to reduce excessive drinking among adults.” – by Jennifer Southall

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.