Report to Congress Offers Plan To Reduce Underage Drinking

Across the Nation, young people are using alcohol more than any other substance of abuse, including tobacco or illicit drugs. (See SAMHSA News, November/December 2005.)

As part of SAMHSA's leadership role to coordinate the Federal effort to address this problem, the Agency has delivered a new report to Congress. The report, A Comprehensive Plan for Preventing and Reducing Underage Drinking, outlines a detailed, goal-driven plan to reduce underage drinking.

In addition, it contains an inventory of Federal programs generated to reduce underage drinking, and an appendix of data on the subject from major Federal surveys.

Developed through the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), the plan takes a multi-faceted, balanced approach to reduce the demand for alcohol and its availability to youth.

The plan has three primary goals:

• Strengthen a national commitment to reducing underage drinking by increasing broad-based awareness of the problem.

• Reduce demand for, availability of, and access to alcohol among those under 21.

• Leverage the power of knowledge—particularly new research, evaluation, and surveillance findings—to help make underage drinking policies and programs more effective.

To evaluate progress, the plan establishes 5-year annual performance measures and three specific targets to be achieved by 2009. Those targets include reducing the prevalence of past-month alcohol use by persons age 12 to 20 by 10 percent, as measured against the 2004 baseline of 28.7 percent.

The full report, A Comprehensive Plan for Preventing and Reducing Underage Drinking, is available online at www.stopalcoholabuse.gov. 

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