During the COVID-19 pandemic, home delivery of liquor boomed in the United States, as did binge drinking, a new study finds.
“‘Home delivery’ refers to when restaurants, bars or retailers use their own employees or a third-party delivery system, such as DoorDash or Uber Eats, to deliver alcohol to consumers’ homes,” said researcher. Elyse Grossman, a social and behavioral sciences administrator at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. “While the number of states allowing home delivery has already shown an upward trend over the past two decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased this number.”
Grossman’s team analyzed legal databases and found that more states were allowing home deliveries during the pandemic. In January 2020, 21 states allowed home delivery of alcohol by retailers, which had grown to 38 states by January 2022.
The number of states that allow home delivery of alcohol from restaurants or bars increased from 23 to 39 states.
The findings were presented Tuesday at a meeting of the Research Society on Alcohol, in Bellevue, Wash.
“While data from the beginning of the pandemic showed large increases in alcohol sales, it was unclear at the time whether individuals were increasing their alcohol consumption or just stocking alcohol,” Grossman said in a press release.
“In May 2020, we conducted an online survey of US adults ages 21 and older living nationwide; the final sample included 838 participants,” she said. “We found that among the adults who obtained at least some of their alcohol through delivery, they reported consuming significantly more alcohol and binge drinking more often than participants who did not obtain their alcohol through delivery.”
While many states have expanded their home delivery laws as a way to help businesses, Grossman said few considered the potential public health consumer.
“In the future, it is important that public health is given more weight when states consider policy decisions that increase access to alcohol,” she said.
“In addition, while we did not examine youth drinking habits – given increased access to alcohol for youth through more comprehensive home delivery laws, and the fact that retailers and third-party delivery providers often fail to check IDs – we hypothesize that youth drinking habits were also likely to have been negatively impacted by expanded home delivery laws and strongly urge future research in this area,” said Grossman.
Findings presented at medical meetings are considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information:
The US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more on it drink and health.
speaker abstract, Alcohol: clinical and experimental research (2023). DOI: 10.1111/acer.15069
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