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.
Back to Top
Back to Graphic Version
|
