Aim: Juvenile alcohol use is a topic of major public interest. Early-onset and excessive drinking during adolescence can lead to serious problems immediately and in later life. Monitoring the prevalence of adolescents’ alcohol use is thus crucial from a public health perspective. In order to evaluate prevention programs or to compare policy strategies of different countries, cross-national monitoring studies are essential.
Subject and methods: On the basis of the Second International Self-Report Study on Delinquency (ISRD-2), alcohol use of 33,566 adolescents, aged 12 to 16, from 25 European countries is described. The findings are compared to those of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) and the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Study (HBSC), in order to learn something about the validity of the data and to draw a comprehensive picture of juvenile alcohol consumption throughout Europe.
Results: Even in a study not primarily concerned with alcohol use, more similarities than differences with respect to alcohol drinking habits across Europe were found. In sum, Northern- and Eastern-European adolescents show an alcohol affinity higher than adolescents from Western and Southern Europe. Frequent drinking is more common in Northern and Central European countries, while Northern and Eastern European Countries are leading with respect to drunkenness of lifetime users. Regarding heavy drinking, some remarkable differences for single countries (e.g. Finland, Portugal, Czech Republic) were indicated.
Conclusions: Gaining sound knowledge about substance-use patterns across European countries could be helpful for assessing the relevance of policies on the one hand and traditions on the other for explaining adolescents’ substance use. In order to get a deeper insight into the varying behaviour of alcohol and drug use in different countries, indicators (e.g. high frequent vs. heavy use) and their reference basis (e.g. all users vs. lifetime users) should be selected carefully.