The University of Minnesota’s Alcohol Epidemiology Program and the Health Research and Policy Centers at the University of Illinois-Chicago, collaborators in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s ImpacTeen Project, recently compiled a report on U.S. state-level alcohol policy aimed at policymakers, researchers, public health professionals, and advocates. Current as of January 1, 2000, the report summarizes patterns and trends of selected policies in each state from four major areas of alcohol law: alcohol distribution systems, purchase and sales of alcohol, alcohol taxation, and drinking and driving. For instance, 18 states maintain some direct control over certain sectors of the alcoholic beverage marker. Alcohol server training policies now exist in 21 states where no training laws existed prior to 1986. Laws requiring registration of beer kegs came into existence only in the late 1970s and, by 2000, one quarter of the states had enacted such a law. Alcohol taxes, tracked from 1968 to 2000 and adjusted for inflation, reveal general trends of erosion in Year 2000 dollars over the period for beer, wine and spirits taxes. All states at the start of 2000 had set legal BAC limits for drink driving at 0.10 g/dL or less, overall, and 0.02 g/dL or less for minors. The effects of these policies on youth alcohol use will be discussed. See www.epi.umn.edu/alcohol
Learning Objectives: 1. Understand characteristics of selected alcohol policies as well as trends in the enactment of these policies. 2. Describe known effects of alcohol policies on public health and implications for the future of legislation that affect the sale, distribution, and consumption of alcohol.
Keywords: Adolescents, Alcohol
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.