Youth drinking in decline: What are the implications for public health, public policy and public debate?

John Holmes,Peter Sylvia Meier,Victoria Whitaker,Michael Livingston,Hannah Fairbrother,Amy Pennay,Melissa Oldham

doi:10.21428/cb6ab371.362d620c

Abstract

Youth drinking in decline: What are the implications for public health, public policy and public debate?

Highlights

Youth drinking has declined markedly across most high-income countries from the mid-2000s onwards
The trends vary in scale and timing across countries (Vashishtha, Pennay, et al, 2020), but appear in both of the main international surveys detailing youth alcohol use; the Health Behaviours in School-aged Children study (HBSC, 2018, Fig. 1) and the European Schools Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) (Inchley et al, 2018; The ESPAD Group, 2020)
The alcohol problems public health actors focus on instead may include those with a high profile but narrow scope, such as recent UK campaigns on ‘children of alcoholics’, which were driven by the personal experiences of a small group of parliamentarians and prompted only minor policy shifts (BBC News, 2018a), albeit relating to high-risk and vulnerable groups

Summary

Introduction

Youth drinking has declined markedly across most high-income countries from the mid-2000s onwards. There is little evidence on changes in drinking among young people and it is unclear whether understandings of the decline in youth drinking may shift as a ‘new normal’ and post-pandemic trends in alcohol consumption emerge.

Results

Conclusion