Restricting Retail Hours of Alcohol Sales within an Army Community
Abstract
Excessive alcohol consumption continues to be a significant concern to overall military readiness. In 2009, the United States Community Preventive Services Task Force recommended policies limiting the hours of alcohol sales as an evidence-based intervention to reduce alcohol-related harms. In June 2014, one Army Installation in the Midwestern United States implemented a policy reducing the retail sale of beverages containing alcohol by eight hours each day within the installation community (2301 0659 daily) to align with the surrounding county policies. Evaluators utilized an interrupted time series design to assess community changes associated with policy implementation. Revenue and crime data were collected 11 and 12 months prior to and after policy implementation, respectively, to quantify adherence to and effectiveness of the policy. The outcome variables measured included Serious Incident Reports (SIRs) and Driving Under the Influence/Driving While Intoxicated (DUI/DWI) citations. A Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test of significance was used to measure changes in crime outcomes post-policy. The results indicated that pre-policy rates of overall DUI/DWI citations, and DUI/DWI citations on-post were significantly higher than post-policy DUI/DWI citations (p < 0.05) and that pre-policy rates of overall DUI/DWI citations occurring off-post, DUI/DWI citations at night, SIRs, alcohol-related SIRs, and SIRs occurring at night were not statistically higher than post-policy rates (p 0.05). Policy adherence was high and total alcohol sales revenue remained stable before and after policy implementation. This was the first known evaluation within a military community to report improvements in crime statistics following an eight hour reduction in daily retail sale hours of alcohol.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1109138
Entities
People
- Brittney S. Mengistu
- Dawnyea D. Jackson
- Lauren E. Grattan
- Steven H. Bullock
- Theresa Jackson Santo
Organizations
- United States Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine