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
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.
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