42 U.S.C. § 290bb–25b — Programs to reduce underage drinking

(a) Definitions For this section: (1) "alcohol beverage industry" means the brewers, vintners, distillers, importers, distributors, and retail or online sellers of beer, wine, and spirits. (2) "School-based prevention" means institutionalized programs run by staff or school-designated people or organizations in any grade, kindergarten through 12th. (3) "Youth" means people under 21. (b) Sense of Congress Congress states its views here, not binding rules: (1) Fighting underage drinking needs one coordinated national effort covering prevention, intervention, treatment, enforcement, and research, plus federal support for state work. (2) The Secretary must keep researching and collecting data on how alcohol use and abuse affects teen brain development and other organs. (3) States and communities, including colleges, are encouraged to adopt full prevention approaches — evidence-based screening programs and lessons, brief intervention strategies, steady policy enforcement, and environmental changes that limit underage access. (4) Public health groups, consumer groups, and the alcohol industry should keep expanding evidence-based prevention efforts. (5) Entertainment industries should use rating systems and marketing codes to keep underage audiences away from unsuitable alcohol content. (6) The NCAA, its member colleges, and its conferences should commit to discouraging alcohol use among underage students and fans. (7) Alcohol should be regulated differently than other products, mainly by the states, with federal support and supplementation; continued state licensing and regulation of alcohol manufacture, import, sale, distribution, transport, and storage serves the public interest — promoting responsible drinking, blocking underage access, keeping the industry orderly, and helping states collect taxes. (c) Interagency coordinating committee; annual reports (1)(A) The Secretary must keep supporting and strengthening the interagency committee on underage drinking that began operating in 2004 (the "Committee"). (B) Other members include the Secretaries of Education, Transportation, Treasury, and Defense; the Attorney General; the Surgeon General; the Directors of the CDC, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse; the Assistant Secretaries for Mental Health and Substance Use and for Children and Families; the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; the Administrators of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Chair of the FTC; and other officials the Secretary picks. (C) The Secretary of Health and Human Services chairs the Committee. (D) The Committee guides federal policy and programs on underage drinking, but this doesn't transfer any agency's regulatory or program authority to the Committee. (E) The Committee must actively seek input from and consult states, public health research and interest groups, foundations, and alcohol industry associations and companies. (F)(i) The Secretary must report to Congress every year, on the Committee's behalf, summarizing federal programs and policies (including those supporting state efforts), progress preventing and reducing underage drinking at state and national levels, the data described in clause (ii), and any other information the Secretary finds appropriate. (ii) That data must cover: patterns and effects of underage drinking, drawing on surveys such as Monitoring the Future, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System; how available alcohol is to youth from commercial and non-commercial sources; how much youth are exposed to alcohol messages in advertising, social media, and entertainment; surveillance data on the onset and prevalence of underage drinking, consumption patterns, trends across age groups, and access methods, plus a plan to improve how this federal data is collected, measured, and reported; any findings from the research described in subsection (g); and evidence-based best practices to prevent, reduce, and treat underage drinking. (2)(A) The Secretary must also issue a yearly "State Report" on each state's performance enacting, enforcing, and running laws, regulations, and programs against underage drinking, based on the best practices identified above, with input from other agencies, states, Indian Tribes, territories, and public health, consumer, and alcohol industry groups; states may use the report as a resource. (B)(i) The Secretary, consulting the Committee, must develop performance measures for this report. (ii) The report must update on: (I) whether the state has comprehensive anti-underage-drinking laws (covering illegal sale, purchase, attempted purchase, consumption, or possession; fake-ID use; and providing alcohol to someone under 21), how strict the penalties are, and how often each is enforced; (II) whether the state has comprehensive liability laws like dram shop, social host, and house party laws, and how often they're enforced; (III) whether the state runs comprehensive enforcement such as random compliance checks and shoulder-tap programs at retailers, the number of checks against the number of outlets, and the results; (IV) whether the state encourages seller/server training as a condition of employment; (V) the state's policies on direct-to-consumer sales and home delivery of alcohol; (VI) whether the state has programs or laws to deter adults from buying alcohol for minors, and how many adults those programs target; (VII) whether the state has graduated driver's licenses, and their scope; (VIII) any other evidence-based prevention policies the state has adopted, which may draw on Surgeon General reports and practices on youth exposure to alcohol products and information; and (IX) how much local jurisdictions' practices vary within the state. (3) $1,000,000 per year is authorized for fiscal years 2023 through 2027 to carry out this subsection. (d) National media campaign (1) The Secretary, consulting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, must develop or continue an intensive, multi-part national media campaign aimed at adults to reduce underage drinking. (2) The campaign's purpose is to: (A) build community awareness of, and commitment to, reducing underage drinking; (B) encourage adult activities that inhibit illegal underage alcohol use; and (C) discourage adult activities that promote it. (3) In running the campaign the Secretary must: (A) educate the public about the benefits of evidence-based strategies, including laws on the minimum legal drinking age, and involve parents; (B) educate the public about underage drinking's negative consequences; (C) identify specific adult actions that discourage or inhibit underage drinking; (D) discourage adult conduct that tends to facilitate it; (E) build collaborative relationships with local and national organizations so campaign messages reach people from many sources; (F) run the campaign through multiple media; and (G) account for demographics and other relevant factors to reach target audiences effectively. (4) The Secretary must review recommendations for reducing underage drinking — including those from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Surgeon General — and consult the alcohol industry, medical, public health, consumer, and parent groups, law enforcement, colleges, community organizations and coalitions, and other stakeholders. (5) The Secretary must produce a yearly report on the campaign's development or implementation, including expenses and projected costs, and — as information allows — its effect on adult attitudes and willingness to act. (6) The Secretary may, if funds allow, research a youth-oriented version of the campaign, and must report any results and recommendations to Congress. (7) The Secretary may delegate execution and administration of the adult-oriented campaign to another federal agency. (8) $2,500,000 per year is authorized for fiscal years 2023 through 2027. (e) Community-based coalition enhancement grants (1) The Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, consulting the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, must award enhancement grants to eligible entities to design, run, evaluate, and share comprehensive community-wide strategies against underage drinking, subject to available funding. (2) The purposes are to: (A) prevent and reduce youth alcohol use nationwide; (B) strengthen collaboration among communities, the federal government, Tribal governments, and state and local governments; (C) improve coordination on youth alcohol use; (D) spark more citizen participation across a community already showing a long-term commitment to reducing youth alcohol use; (E) apply evidence-based prevention and reduction strategies; and (F) add to, not replace, effective local community initiatives. (3) An applicant must submit an application as the Assistant Secretary requires, including either (A) a full description of the entity's current underage-alcohol prevention work and how the grant will sharpen its focus on underage drinking, or (B) a description of the entity's current initiatives and how the grant will add a focus on underage drinking prevention. (4) A grantee must use the funds for the activities in its application and get specialized training and technical assistance from the entity funded under section 4 of Public Law 107–82. Grants can't exceed $60,000 a year and can't run more than four years. (5) Grant funds must supplement, not replace, other federal and non-federal funding for these activities. (6) Grants face the same evaluation requirements and procedures as Drug-Free Communities grants. (7) "Eligible entity" means an organization currently receiving, or that has received, grant funds under the Drug-Free Communities Act of 1997. (8) No more than 6 percent of a grant may go to administrative expenses. (9) $11,500,000 per year is authorized for fiscal years 2023 through 2027. (f) Grants to organizations representing pediatric providers (1) The Secretary, through the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, must make awards to one or more entities representing pediatric providers and related health professionals that have shown they can spread effective practices among their members to reduce alcohol use in people under 21, including college students. (2) Grants must improve: (A) screening teens for alcohol use; (B) offering brief interventions to discourage such use; (C) educating parents on its dangers and how to discourage it; (D) diagnosing and treating alcohol use disorders; and (E) referring patients to other appropriate care when needed. (3) A grantee may use funds to promote these practices among its members by (A) training health care providers, (B) sharing best practices — including culturally and linguistically appropriate ones — and developing and distributing materials, and (C) supporting other activities the Assistant Secretary approves. (4) An applicant must submit an application including (A) a description of the entity, (B) a description of the activities that will promote the practices in paragraph (2), (C) a description of the entity's qualifications, and (D) a timeline for completing the activities. (5) Definitions: (A) "brief intervention" means, after screening a patient, giving them brief advice and other brief motivational techniques meant to help them understand their alcohol use and its consequences and change their behavior. (B) "Screening" means using validated interview techniques to identify and measure a patient's alcohol use. (6) $3,000,000 per year is authorized for fiscal years 2023 through 2027. (g) Data collection and research (1)(A) Subject to available funding, the Secretary must support data collection and conduct or support research on underage drinking that doesn't duplicate other current HHS work, covering: (i) evaluating — including by building relevant state expertise — comprehensive community-based programs and statewide systems that prevent and reduce underage drinking across childhood to age 21, including those funded by governments, public health groups and foundations, and alcohol companies and trade associations; (ii) getting and reporting more precise information than is now collected on the scope of underage drinking and consumption patterns, including better knowledge of progress in prevention, reduction, and treatment, and data on youth exposure to alcohol advertising and other media messages; (iii) developing and identifying evidence-based or evidence-informed strategies, which may include translational research; and (iv) improving public health data collection on alcohol use and related conditions in states, which may include expanding surveys like the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to track binge and excessive drinking and related harm — to self or others — among 18-to-20-year-olds, without duplicating other current HHS work. (B) $5,000,000 per year is authorized for fiscal years 2023 through 2027 for this paragraph. (2)(A) Within 12 months of December 29, 2022, the Secretary must (i) contract with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to study developments in underage-drinking research and their implications, and (ii) report the results to Congress. (B) $500,000 is authorized for fiscal year 2023 for this paragraph.