NCJ Number
186978
Journal
Alcohol Research and Health Volume: 24 Issue: 1 Dated: 2000 Pages: 42-51
Date Published
2000
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the current status of research on preventing alcohol abuse and alcoholism, with emphasis on efforts to reduce driving under the influence, juvenile alcohol use, and alcohol consumption in general and on the effects of alcohol advertising on drinking behavior.
Abstract
Scientists and policymakers have explored numerous strategies to prevent alcohol abuse and dependence as well as the adverse social, legal, and medical consequences of alcohol use. Many of these efforts have focused on reducing alcohol-impaired driving and the associated injuries and fatalities. Such efforts have included general deterrence laws, including a reduced minimum legal drinking age, administrative license revocation, and lower legal limits for blood alcohol concentrations. Other efforts have focused on repeat offenders and on controlling alcohol availability through increased taxes and decreased numbers of establishments that sell alcohol. The prevention approaches have reduced alcohol-related traffic deaths; further reductions could occur if all States enacted certain laws. Three recent major community-based studies to prevent alcohol problems include Project Northland, Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol, and the Community Trials Project. None of these studies has reported substantially large impacts on their chosen targets, but a real effect may be observed in all of them. However, individual aspects of these studies were so well developed that the observed impact might have taken place without other community activities. Studies of the effects of alcohol advertising have included experimental research, econometric analyses, surveys, and intervention studies of media literacy programs. The results are mixed and not conclusive; therefore, longitudinal studies would be useful. 27 references