The proposed work will provide a comprehensive evaluation of the effects of imminent alcohol warning label legislation. Two studies are planned to evaluate labeling effects on (1) self-reported alcohol consumption and memory, attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs about the consequences of alcohol use among adolescents; and (2) alcohol-related morbidity and mortality rates. Study 1 will include prelabeling data from 17,000 students that are collected annually as part of the Midwestern Prevention Project, a multiple community alcohol and drug abuse prevention project implemented in Kansas City (since 1984) and Indianapolis (since 1987). The MPP design in each site enables tests of main effects of the warning labels on control groups and interaction effects with the community intervention program. Longitudinal causal models for the process by which exposure to the warning labels changes consumption will be estimated. In Study 2, national and state consumption, health problem and traffic casualty data will be collected for the 10 years prior to legislation and four years after legislation. Time series methods will be used to determine the size, lag, and decay of the intervention effect. If exposure to the label is preventive, we expect stronger effects for beer versus liquor and on states with a higher proportion of off-sale alcohol outlets. The project capitalizes on existing adolescent and archival data to evaluate labeling effects on both intermediate psychological measures and archival measures of alcohol problems.
