Alcohol Outlets and Problem Drinking Among Adults in California * (Report‪)‬

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS often regulate alcohol outlets by placing limits on the number of available licenses, typically in relation to population. California imposes a moratorium on the issuance of retail licenses when the ratio exceeds one on-sale general license for each 2,000 persons and one off-sale general license for each 2,500 persons in the county in which the premises are situated. The list of moratorium counties includes every county with fewer than 300,000 residents and all counties with low population densities but none of the more densely populated counties with more than 1 million residents (Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, 2005). As a consequence, in counties that are not restricted by the moratorium for additional licenses, alcohol is more available in terms of individual distance to alcohol outlets, travel time, or search costs. The rationale behind the moratorium regulation is the belief that a high density of alcohol outlets causes alcohol-related problems. Ecological studies found that alcohol out lets were associated with motor vehicle crashes, assault violence (Scribner et al., 1994, 1995), arrest rates for public drunkenness, misdemeanor and felony drunken driving, cirrhosis mortality rates (Rabow and Watts, 1982; Watts and Rabow, 1983), violent crimes (Gorman et al., 2001; Speer et al., 1998; Zhu et al., 2004), child maltreatment rates (Freisthler et al., 2005), and homicide rates (Scribner et al., 1999). However, making inferences about individual behaviors based on aggregate relationships in ecological studies can be misleading--a problem known as the ecological fallacy (Robinson, 1950). Ecological fallacy refers to an error in interpretation of statistical data, whereby inferences about certain individual behaviors are based solely on aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong. However, it is a valid suggestion from the previous studies that alcohol outlets can have an independent effect on alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems through different pathways that need further investigation.