Systematic Review on Alcohol Taxes to Reduce Excessive Drinking Now Available

Raising alcohol excise taxes is a highly effective strategy for helping to prevent the approximately 79,000 deaths due to excessive drinking in the United States, according to a systematic review published in the February 2010 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The review evaluated 73 published articles and technical reports that examined the relationships between the price of alcohol, excessive drinking, and several harmful consequences of excessive drinking.

Results of the review indicate that increasing the price of alcoholic beverages by 10 percent would reduce the overall consumption of these beverages by about 7 percent. The relationship between price and consumption held true across all alcoholic beverage types, but was somewhat greater for liquor than for beer. State and federal governments implement beverage-specific alcohol taxes, which can be different for beer, wine, and spirits.

"Raising taxes has played an important role in the success of efforts to reduce the harms from tobacco use, and these results indicate that it can also help to reduce the harms resulting from excessive alcohol use,” said Randy Elder, Ph.D., the lead scientist for this review at CDC’s Community Guide Branch. “And, the public health effects are expected to be proportional to the size of the tax increase.”

Guide to Community Preventive Service (Community Guide) scientists at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) led the review, in collaboration with federal and nonfederal experts in research, practice, and policy related to excessive alcohol use. Based on the strong evidence from this review, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (Task Force) recommends raising alcohol excise taxes to reduce excessive drinking and related harms.

Excessive alcohol consumption includes the following:

• Binge drinking (4 or more drinks per occasion for women, and 5 or more drinks per occasion for men)
• Heavy drinking (more than 1 drink per day on average for women, and more than 2 drinks per day for men)
• Any alcohol use by underage youth; and any alcohol use by pregnant women

Excessive alcohol use is responsible for many adverse health and social consequences, which include liver cirrhosis, breast and colon cancer, unintentional injuries, violence, unintended pregnancy, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

The Task Force is a nonfederal, volunteer, independent group of public health and prevention experts appointed by the CDC Director. The following articles describe the systematic review and recommendation, review methods and other findings.

Task Force Recommendation

Increasing Alcohol Beverage Taxes is Recommended to Reduce Excessive Alcohol Consumption and Related Harms. Am J Prev Med 2010;38(2):230-2.

Evidence Review

The Effectiveness of Tax Policy Interventions for Reducing Excessive Alcohol Consumption and Related Harms. Am J Prev Med 2010;38(2):217-29.

Learn more about this recommendation and related findings:

• Intervention Summary – Preventing Excessive Alcohol Use: Increasing Alcohol Taxes
• News & Announcement (June 2009) – Task Force Recommends Increasing Alcohol Taxes to Prevent Excessive Alcohol Use and Other Harms

Visit Community Guide topics to learn more about other Community Guide systematic reviews, including additional reviews about preventing excessive alcohol use.