The largest federal initiative focused on underage drinking was launched by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 1998. $75 million has been appropriated to support this effort, now known as the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws Program. Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia has received significant funding under this program to support state and local efforts to enforce laws related to alcohol use by underage persons and to prevent underage drinking. The overarching goals of the national evaluation of the program are to: (1) determine what state and local programmatic activities are being supported, and (2) evaluate the impact of the program in a sample of communities. This paper describes the design of the evaluation and presents baseline data from the youth and law enforcement surveys.
Samenvatting