Effect of Monitoring the Compliance of Banning Alcohol Sales to Minors in the Volume of Underage Acute Alcohol Intoxication Cases in Mexico: A Controlled ITSA Analysis

In México, underage alcohol consumption is a major public health problem. Notwith-standing the complex character of alcohol consumption, evidence indicates that enforcing the policies aimed to control the availability of alcohol has produced positive outcomes and has proved to be one of the most cost-effective strategies for curbing consumption, as well as they have succeeded in reducing health and social problems associated to alcohol use. Evaluate the effect of enforcing compliance with minimum-age restrictions for thesale of alcoholic beverages in the number of cases of acute alcohol intoxication in underage population in México. A controlled interrupted time series analysis (ITSA)model was resorted in order to assess the effect of enforcing the ban of alcohol sales to underage individuals at national level in Mexico. The outcome variable was cases of acute alcohol intoxication (F10.0) discharged in emergency services in the group from 10 to 19 years of age. We found a statistically significant drop (16.4%) in the cases of acute alcohol intoxication immediately after the program implementation. This result suggests that monitoring and enforcing strategies to ban alcohol sales to underage individuals can provide an effective tool to reduce the negative outcomes of underage alcohol consumption.