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 The findings support the Institute of Medicine, which says
strategies to reduce and prevent underage drinking must target
parents and adults, the authors wrote in the journal Pediatrics.
“This is the first study to examine possible effects of all state
alcohol control policies collectively, and the subset of state
policies most relevant to underage drinking,” said Mallie J.
Paschall of the Prevention Research Center at the Pacific Institute
for Research and Evaluation in Oakland, California.
Paschall, who was not involved in the new study, had previously
compared alcohol policies by country and found similar results:
lower levels of youth drinking in countries with stronger alcohol
policies.
Some policies aimed more at adults may affect underage drinking
indirectly, Paschall added by email.
For the current study, Ziming Xuan of Boston University School of
Public Health and colleagues used a scoring tool called the Alcohol
Policy Scale to rate the strength of state-level policy measures.
They also looked at data from seven Youth Risk Behavior Surveys of
high school students conducted biannually between 1999 and 2011.
Students in 9th through 12th grade reported how often they had any
alcoholic drinks or been binge drinking over the previous month.
As state alcohol policy scale scores got higher, the odds of youth
alcohol consumption and binge drinking declined, the researchers
found.
This relationship was the same for youth-oriented alcohol policies
and general alcohol policies that do not target youth. Stronger
general alcohol policies were tied to less alcohol consumption per
adult, and adult drinking was correlated with youth drinking.
Two policies aimed at adults - increased alcohol taxation and
reduction in places where alcohol is sold - accounted for almost
half of the policy-related reduction in drinking among adults, as
reported in Pediatrics.
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The expert ratings of alcohol policy strength were partly
subjective, the authors admit. Also, they say, the scores didn’t
account for federal or local policies, variations between states,
and policies with insufficient data, which limits the results, the
authors wrote.
“It's possible that other factors not measured in this study
influence both the alcohol policies and underage drinking, so we
can't conclude that there is a causal effect,” Paschall said.
“However, the study did control for a number of other state and
individual characteristics that could influence both alcohol
policies and/or underage drinking.”
A minimum legal drinking age and minimum drinking age sales laws,
which are aimed at youth, and increased alcohol taxation, which is
not explicitly aimed at youth, appear to be most effective at
curbing youth drinking, he said.
Stronger alcohol policies were tied to a seven percent reduction in
odds of youth drinking and eight percent reduction in odds of binge
drinking, which may not seem like a large reduction but does
represent a large number of underage drinking occasions that did not
happen, he said.
“Increasing alcohol taxation and enforcing minimum drinking age laws
would be an effective strategy for reducing both adult and underage
drinking,” Paschall said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1EOeiEp Pediatrics, online June 1, 2015.
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