The most documented effective principle in alcohol use prevention is: Make it harder for young people to get alcohol, and they will drink less. Whether you are a policymaker at the local, State, or national level, you can help enact and support policies that prevent the availability of alcohol to young people who are below the minimum drinking age.

In this section, you will find questions to ask yourself about alcohol policies and prevention strategies, as well as resources that include useful publications and helpful organizations. For additional information, see also Information For You, Law Enforcement.

As a policymaker, ask yourself these questions. Keep in mind that you may have different answers based on whether you are answering in regard to your State, your county, or your city.

• Does your State, county, or city have regulations to restrict the commercial availability of alcohol to underage youth? Are they effectively enforced?

• Does your State, county, or city have regulations to restrict the non-commercial availability of alcohol to underage youth? Are they effectively enforced?

• Does your State, county, or city have regulations to prevent youth possession of alcohol? Are they effectively enforced?

• Are members of the educational system (public and private), the business sector, youth serving agencies, government, and law enforcement agencies in your State, county, or city working together to develop and enforce policies related to underage alcohol use?

• Register kegs. Keg parties can be gathering sites for large groups of underage drinkers. Keg registration links each keg with its purchaser’s ID. Authorities can use the keg ID to trace the person responsible and apply appropriate penalties.
  
  
• Train and license servers and sellers. In many States and jurisdictions, alcohol licensees and their employees must undergo training as a condition of doing business. This training often includes instruction in the importance of checking IDs, and seller and employee liability when sales are made to minors.

• Implement compliance checks.  Compliance checks can show whether sellers and servers of alcohol are obeying minimum age laws. A decoy (an individual who is underage or looks underage) attempts an alcohol purchase using no ID or a false ID. If a sale is made, the police can take appropriate action against the seller.

• Control the number of alcohol outlets. Large numbers of outlets make it easier to buy alcohol and make alcohol a more visible part of the environment. Communities can control the number of alcohol outlets through planning and zoning ordinances and by using conditional use permits.

• Raise the price of alcoholic beverages. Higher prices have been shown to reduce alcohol purchases, particularly those by minors.

• Restrict home delivery. More than half of the Nation’s States allow home delivery of alcohol. However, jurisdictions can forbid or restrict home delivery of alcohol to prevent underage alcohol sales. If communities choose not to ban home deliveries of alcohol, they can require that delivery people record the purchaser’s ID.

The above strategies appear in the Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol Free prevention booklet. For more information on science-based prevention strategies, click on Keep Kids Alcohol Free: Strategies for Action .

 Alcohol Policy Resources

Alcohol Beverage Control Enforcement: Legal Research Report provides an analysis of twelve policies that pertain to alcohol beverage control enforcement in the areas of underage drinking and impaired driving. (National Liquor Law Enforcement Association, completed by Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) under contract with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

The Alcohol Compliance Checks Procedures Manual is a practical guide for public officials, law enforcement officers, and alcohol-regulation agents who are developing and implementing a compliance check system for establishments that sell or serve alcohol. (Alcohol Epidemiology Program, University of Minnesota)

Alcohol Policies in the United States: Highlights From the 50 States provides information on patterns and trends of selected alcohol policies around the country, and on the status of the policies in each State as of January 1, 2000. (Prepared for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by the Alcohol Epidemiology Program, University of Minnesota )

The Community How To Guides on Underage Drinking Prevention are nine guides that were developed as a part of the National Underage Drinking Prevention Project. The guides provide advice on participation by law enforcement agencies, as well as coalition building, strategic planning, prevention education, and public policy. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Governors Highway Safety Association)

The Making the Link fact sheets contain current statistics on a variety of topics relating to underage drinking, including access to alcohol and public opinion. They were prepared by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration/Center for Substance Abuse Prevention to support the Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol Free initiative (PDF files):

Underage Drinking and Access to Alcohol
Underage Drinking and Public Opinion
Underage Drinking and Risky Behavior
Underage Drinking and Violence

Point-of-Purchase Alcohol Marketing and Promotion by Store Type — United States,2000—2001 is a study published by the ImpacTeen Project and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

State Alcohol Advertising Laws: Current Status and Model Policies identifies key State regulatory strategies that can be effective in reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising and assesses current State practices, evaluating each State’s current law and providing a means for each State to evaluate priorities for enforcement and statutory and regulatory reform.  (Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth)

Strategies to Reduce Underage Alcohol Use: Typology and Brief Overview discusses strategic planning methods to prevent underage alcohol use and the level of effect that might be expected from each strategy. (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention)

Youth Access to Alcohol Survey. Summary Report. December 2002  measures the public’s attitudes and concerns regarding the issues and policies surrounding youth access to alcohol. This report summarizes results of the 2001 follow-up survey to the 1998 report, and initial analyses examining changes over time from 1997 to 2001. (Prepared for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by the Alcohol Epidemiology Program, University of Minnesota)

Organizations

State Alcohol Control Boards and Liquor Control Agencies are responsible for licensing the alcohol industries, for collecting and auditing taxes and fees paid by the licensees, and for enforcing the laws and regulations that pertain to the alcohol beverage industries. The Leadership's State map provides links to State pages with contact information for these agencies.

Some State boards and agencies are members of the National Alcohol Control Beverage Association (NABCA), a trade association representing 19 jurisdictions known as the "control states" which regulate alcohol beverage distribution within their respective borders, and also sell these products at the wholesale and, in many cases, retail level.

The Alcohol Epidemiology Program (AEP), School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, conducts advanced research to discover effective community and policy interventions to reduce alcohol-related social and health problems.

The Alcohol Policy Information System (APIS), funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, provides user-searchable access to authoritative, detailed, and comparable information on alcohol-related policies in the United States, at both State and Federal levels. APIS is intended to encourage and facilitate research on the effects and effectiveness of alcohol-related policies.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit education and advocacy organization, works on reducing the detrimental effects of alcohol consumption by educating the public about alcohol through the Alcohol Policies Project; and representing citizens’ interests before legislative, regulatory, and judicial bodies

Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems works with policymakers, employers, and concerned citizens, providing research-based information and tools to help curb health care and other costs associated with alcohol use, and improve access to treatment. (George Washington University Medical Center, supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts)

ImpacTeen, a policy research partnership, collects data on trends, markets, policies, legislation, enforcement, treatment, prevention and educational programs, advertising, and other environmental factors from all 50 States, as well as a nationally representative sample of about 1,000 communities. It is merging these data with nationally representative surveys of youth to evaluate the relative effectiveness of specific prevention programs and policies in reducing underage substance use and abuse.

JoinTogether is a national resource for communities working to reduce substance abuse that provides daily news articles and sources on Federal and State legislation, both current and upcoming.

The Marin Institute: Preventing Alcohol Problems provides links to alcohol beverage industry sites and to recovery and self-help organizations, as well as access to the Institute's alcohol industry and policy database.

National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth (NCFY) assists groups and individuals seeking to support young people and their families by sharing information through its Web site, providing materials for distribution at conferences and training events, conducting research on topics of interest, and partnering with others who are working on similar issues. See the NCFY section for Professionals and Policymakers. (Family and Youth Services Bureau)

The National Liquor Law Enforcement Association (NLLEA) is a nonprofit association of law enforcement personnel dedicated to improving the standards and practices of liquor law enforcement and the professional development of its members.

The Office of Juvenile Justice Enforcement of Underage Drinking Program has awarded grants to all 50 States and the District of Columbia to enforce underage drinking laws. It also funds an Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center to provide training, technical assistance, and resource materials to the States as they implement the initiative grants.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the President, establishes policies, priorities, and objectives for the Nation's drug control program. Its goals are to reduce illicit drug use, manufacturing, and trafficking; drug-related crime and violence; and drug-related health consequences.

The Substance Abuse Policy Research Program funds multidisciplinary research related to alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug policy. Examples of alcohol-related projects include a study of the effects of no-color, print-only beer ads on teens and an examination of the structure and practices of alcohol beverage control agencies.

U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention assists college and community leaders in developing, implementing, and evaluating programs and policies to reduce student problems related to alcohol and other drug use and interpersonal violence.