Relationships of State Alcohol Policy Environments With Homicides and Suicides

Alcohol use is involved in a large proportion of homicides and suicides each year in the U.S., but there is limited evidence on how policies targeting alcohol influence violence in the U.S.

Extant studies generally focus on individual policies in isolation of each other. This study examines the impacts of changes in states' alcohol policy restrictions on overall homicide and suicide rates and firearm-related homicide and suicide rates using a holistic measure of states' alcohol policy environments.

Using a composite measure of state-level alcohol policies (Alcohol Policy Scale) and data from the National Vital Statistics System from 2002 to 2018, this study applied a Bayesian time series model to estimate the impacts of alcohol policy changes on overall and firearm-involved homicide and suicide rates. The analysis was performed in 2023 and 2024.

A 1 SD change in the Alcohol Policy Scale was associated with a 6% decline in homicide rates both overall (incident rate ratio=0.94; 95% credible interval = 0.89, 1.00) and for firearm homicides specifically (incident rate ratio=0.94, 95% CI=0.88, 1.01). There was no clear association of alcohol policy with suicides. The model predicts that a nationwide increase in alcohol restrictions equivalent to a shift from the 25^th to 75^th percentile of the scale's distribution would result in almost 1,200 fewer homicides annually.

Increases in the restrictiveness of state-level alcohol policies are associated with reductions in homicides. More restrictive alcohol policy environments may offer an opportunity to reduce homicides.