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Review
. 2018 Jan;79(1):58-67.

Alcohol Consumption and the Physical Availability of Take-Away Alcohol: Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of the Days and Hours of Sale and Outlet Density

Adam Sherk  1 , Tim Stockwell  1 , Tanya Chikritzhs  2 , Sven Andréasson  3 , Colin Angus  4 , Johanna Gripenberg  5 , Harold Holder  6 , John Holmes  4 , Pia Mäkelä  7 , Megan Mills  1 , Thor Norström  8 , Mats Ramstedt  9 , Jonathan Woods  1
Affiliations
  • PMID: 29227232
Free article
Review

Alcohol Consumption and the Physical Availability of Take-Away Alcohol: Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of the Days and Hours of Sale and Outlet Density

Adam Sherk et al. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2018 Jan.
Free article

Abstract

Objective: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were completed studying the effect of changes in the physical availability of take-away alcohol on per capita alcohol consumption. Previous reviews examining this topic have not focused on off-premise outlets where take-away alcohol is sold and have not completed meta-analyses.

Method: Systematic reviews were conducted separately for policies affecting the temporal availability (days and hours of sale) and spatial availability (outlet density) of take-away alcohol. Studies were included up to December 2015. Quality criteria were used to select articles that studied the effect of changes in these policies on alcohol consumption with a focus on natural experiments. Random-effects meta-analyses were applied to produce the estimated effect of an additional day of sale on total and beverage-specific consumption.

Results: Separate systematic reviews identified seven studies regarding days and hours of sale and four studies regarding density. The majority of articles included in these systematic reviews, for days/hours of sale (7/7) and outlet density (3/4), concluded that restricting the physical availability of take-away alcohol reduces per capita alcohol consumption. Meta-analyses studying the effect of adding one additional day of sale found that this was associated with per capita consumption increases of 3.4% (95% CI [2.7, 4.1]) for total alcohol, 5.3% (95% CI [3.2, 7.4]) for beer, 2.6% (95% CI [1.8, 3.5]) for wine, and 2.6% (95% CI [2.1, 3.2]) for spirits. The small number of included studies regarding hours of sale and density precluded meta-analysis.

Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that decreasing the physical availability of take-away alcohol will decrease per capita consumption. As decreasing per capita consumption has been shown to reduce alcohol-related harm, restricting the physical availability of take-away alcohol would be expected to result in improvements to public health.

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