Findings alcohol bulletins: preventing underage sales; fewer under-18s needing treatment; health promotion gains limited; alcohol testing lorry drivers?

Recent bulletins from the drug and alcohol bank:

Road-tested good ideas to prevent underage alcohol sales 

No controlled studies, but lots of ideas which seem to have worked from case study areas across the UK featuring innovation and cooperation in promoting compliance with laws banning sale of alcohol to under-18s and in reducing related public nuisance.

Fewer under-18s need specialist treatment in England 

National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse documents increasingly successful specialist treatment of children with alcohol and drug problems in England. Patient numbers have fallen in line with falls among young adult patients and the general population, a sign of fewer drug problems generally, though cannabis bucked the downward trend.

Few sustained gains from health promotion session with college students

US university students at first cut back their drinking and cannabis use in response to a brief face-to-face contrast of their desired image versus their health-related behaviour, but the gains were no longer apparent a year later. Yet still at that time they had at least experienced more positive trends in how well they felt than students who had just read a fitness brochure.

Too little evidence to recommend drug/alcohol testing lorry drivers 

Exhaustive search finds just two rigorous studies of workplace testing for alcohol and/or drug use of people employed as drivers. For drugs there was some evidence of a long-term effect averting injuries and deaths, but in respect of both drugs and alcohol the evidence was too thin to support any particular policy.