What if Americans drank less? The potential effect on the prevalence of alcohol abuse and dependence

Several advisory committees have recently recommended that alcohol consumption be limited to moderate levels. Moderate drinking has been defined generally as not more than two drinks per day for healthy men and not more than one drink per day for healthy, nonpregnant women. The impact of reducing alcohol consumption to within the recommended guidelines on the prevalence of two serious alcohol-related problems was examined by modeling the relationship between average daily ethanol intake and alcohol abuse and dependence.

The recommended drinking guidelines, both in their existing form and modified by a measure of impairment, were applied to the observed distribution of consumption derived from a large representative survey of the US general population.

The results demonstrated that restricting drinking to the maximum allowable levels under the existing and the modified guidelines would reduce the prevalence of alcohol abuse and dependence by 14.2% and 47.1%, respectively, in the adult US general population.

Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the validity of the assumptions underlying the models and the nature and direction of future research that would form the basis of newly developed guidelines for safe drinking limits.