Media release

From: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC)

The earlier teenagers begin drinking before the minimum legal age for purchasing alcohol, the higher the risk of heavy drinking and alcohol-related harms in early adulthood.

This is the key finding to emerge from a long-term study, published in Addiction, on patterns of alcohol use among more than 900 Australian adolescents who were followed up annually for 10 years.

Researchers led by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW Sydney said teenagers who began drinking early (age 12) were more likely to report heavy episodic drinking and alcohol abuse than those who began drinking at age 18.

“Our findings support the current guidelines recommending teenagers avoid alcohol until adulthood and reinforce the need for public health intervention targeting both children and parents,” said Associate Professor Amy Peacock, who is Deputy Director of NDARC and senior author of the study.

“It also challenges the assumption that the occasional sip or taste at the dinner table with parents is harmless compared to consuming whole drinks, as the risk of alcohol-related harms in our study was elevated regardless of the amount consumed.”

But one positive finding from the study was that risky drinking behaviour peaks and declines relatively quickly, regardless of age of initiation.

“Despite the rapid escalation of consumption, we saw evidence of ‘ageing out’ in some participants for both heavy episodic drinking and alcohol-related harms after peaking around age 20,” said first author Dr Philip Clare, a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney.

“While it is possible that the risk of harm may decline without intervention, our focus should remain on reducing the ‘peak’ and any long-term impacts, such as alcohol dependence and alcohol use disorder.

“This requires prevention and early intervention in adolescence.”

What did the study find?

As part of the prospective cohort study, the research team looked at patterns of drinking based on age at which alcohol was initiated using data from the Australian Parental Supply of Alcohol Longitudinal Study (APSALS).

Participants in APSALS were recruited in adolescence (average age 13) from more than 100 Australian schools and were followed up annually until adulthood.

Overall, those who initiated alcohol at age 12 had a lower risk of consumption and harm in the following year compared to those who initiated later in adolescence or early adulthood.

But by age 20, these early initiators were 24% more likely report monthly heavy episodic drinking – i.e., consuming at least four standard drinks on an occasion – and 73% more likely to experience alcohol-related harms than those who initiated at age 18.

Similar results were reported for symptoms consistent with alcohol dependence (20% higher risk), alcohol abuse (54%) and alcohol use disorder (36%).

At the same time, later initiation to alcohol was associated with a more rapid escalation in drinking and associated harms, but not to the extent seen among the early initiators.

“Initiation to drinking whole drinks showed largely similar trends to initiation of any alcohol consumption, however the early patterns were steeper, and more similar across initiation ages,” the authors wrote.

But they cautioned that more research was needed given the general decline in alcohol consumption among young people in Australia.

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