Declining trends in adolescent alcohol consumption and related harms: No room for complacency (an empirical reply to Vieira et al. 2025)

Abstract

Vieira et al. report that alcohol-related harms among adolescents have generally declined in high-income countries where youth drinking has decreased, but several methodological choices complicate this conclusion. By performing reproducibility analyses on Vieira et al.'s raw data, we show that their findings are more nuanced and complex. Secondary data analyses reveal that 19–24-year-olds have elevated vulnerability to alcohol-related harms. Any discussion of declining trends in adolescent alcohol consumption and related harms should acknowledge that current prevalence rates and harms remain unacceptably high and require continued public health attention.