Study: Effective State Alcohol Policy Lowers Binge Drinking

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A new study published by researchers at Boston University’s School of Public Health and Boston Medical Center confirms that states implementing effective alcohol policies have significantly lower binge drinking rates. The most effective policies include state monopoly over alcohol wholesale and/or retail sales, restrictions on hours of alcohol sales, higher beer taxes, wholesale and retail price restrictions, and restrictions on outlet density. Binge drinking accounts for almost half of the 88,000 alcohol-attributable deaths in the U.S. each year and three-fourths of the $223 billion in economic costs. “If alcohol policies were a newly discovered gene, pill or vaccine, we’d be investing billions of dollars to bring them to market,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, senior author of the study, who is associate professor of medicine and community health sciences and an attending physician at BMC.