THURSDAY, April 27 (HealthSCOUT) -- In 1991, California bumped its beer tax from 4 cents a gallon to 20 cents. The move might have irked frat brothers and baseball fans, but it delighted public health officials. Why?
The state's gonorrhea rate fell 30 percent in the year after the tax hike, which served to take beer out of the hands of people, especially teens, who might otherwise have been lulled into sexual recklessness, researchers say.
Nor is the Golden State unique. Boosting the beer tax by 20 cents a six-pack could lower rates of gonorrhea by as much as 9 percent, new research suggests.
The study, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, found that policies restricting access to alcohol by young people can have a significant impact on the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
Alcohol and safe sex behaviors don't get along well, especially among teens. Condom use, which can guard against AIDS and other infections, drops when teens drink or take drugs, experts say. And a 1992 survey of high school students showed that nearly 20 percent of girls and 40 percent of boys believed it was acceptable for a boy to force sex if the girl was high or drunk.
Thus, health officials say, keeping alcohol out of the reach of teens should help reduce risky practices.
In the latest study, the researchers looked at nationwide gonorrhea rates between 1981 and 1995, and matched those with alcohol policies, such as raised drinking ages and tax increases. Gonorrhea rates among 15- to 19-year-olds fell in two-thirds of states that made alcohol more expensive or less accessible.
The incidence of infection among adults ages 20 to 24 dropped in three-quarters of states that made such changes. The link was stronger in both age groups for men than for women.
Harrell Chesson, a CDC economist and a co-author of the study, says the researchers can't be sure that other factors -- such as safe-sex campaigns prompted by the AIDS epidemic or differences in state disease reporting systems -- aren't also contributing to the drop in infection rates. Still, Chesson says, "we found that higher state alcohol taxes can reduce the rates of sexually transmitted diseases."
States that raised the minimum drinking age during the study also saw a decline in gonorrhea, Chesson says, by about 7 percent on average.
While the latest report only covers the impact of alcohol policies on gonorrhea, the researchers also looked at their effect on syphilis. Those results are due to appear next month.
Other research also suggests that alcohol policies are intimately tied to sexual behavior. One recent study, for example, found that rates of teen pregnancy drop when alcohol becomes harder for minors to get.
Thomas Dee, a Swarthmore College economist who looked at the link between teen pregnancy and drinking ages, says his findings and the new CDC report "suggest that by limiting alcohol availability by making it more expensive may have benefits in terms of generating better life-cycle behaviors."
However, Dee notes, social scientists must be careful not to suggest causal relationships where evidence doesn't support such a claim. "Alcohol use is correlated with all kinds of bad things, and so is not flossing your teeth, but it doesn't mean one causes the other," he says.
What To Do
This HealthSCOUT story says the younger a drunken driver's first offense, the greater his chances of becoming a violent criminal with serious mental problems.
To learn more about sexually transmitted diseases and alcohol and drug use, check out the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information.
