There is no doubt that underage drinking is a major public health problem in the United States. In 1998, about 10.4 million current drinkers were between the ages of 12 and 20.¹ More than five million of these individuals were binge drinkers.¹ One study estimates the total economic cost of alcohol use by underage drinkers in America amounts to nearly $53 billion a year. This includes more than $29 billion in alcohol-related violent crime costs, over $19 billion in traffic crashes, and over $1.5 billion in suicide attempts (fatal and nonfatal).²

To address the growing cost to society associated with underage drinking, Congress appropriated $50 million, over a two-year period, to the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to fund the Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Program (formerly the Combating Underage Drinking Program). In fiscal years 1998 and 1999 the program provided block grants, discretionary funds, and training and technical assistance to state and local jurisdictions in an effort to help develop comprehensive and coordinated initiatives to enforce state laws that prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors and to prevent the purchase or consumption of alcoholic beverages by individuals under the age of 21.³

Enforcement of state and local laws has proven highly effective in the past. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, since 1975 over 18,000 young lives have been saved by minimum drinking-age laws.⁴ Implementing zero tolerance laws, vigorous use of compliance checks and increases in alcoholic-beverage excise taxes have also been found to be effective in curbing youth alcohol consumption.⁵

In an effort to assist state and local governments to identify "gaps" in their current efforts to reduce youth access to alcohol, OJJDP offers a guide highlighting the "best practices" for regulating underage drinking. The guide contains the following recommendations:

References:

1. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Summary of Findings from the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, August 1999.
2. Levy, D.T., Miller, T. R., Spicer, R., & Stewart, K. Underage Drinking: Intermediate Consequences and their Costs, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation working paper, June 1999.
3. McKinney, K. Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Program, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, May 1999.
4. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Traffic Safety Facts 1998: Young Drivers, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1999.
5. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. Strategies to Reduce Underage Alcohol Use: Typology and Brief Overview, in support of the OJJDP Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Program, 1999.
6. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. Regulatory Strategies for Preventing Youth Access to Alcohol: Best Practices, prepared for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention National Leadership Conference, July 11-14, 1999.

For More Information on the Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Program
and the Cost of Underage Drinking:

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/enforcing/enforcing.html

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation:
   general information --http://www.udetc.org/
   state contacts --http://www.udetc.org/StateContacts.htm

September 1999 (revised April 2001)