Guidance
This guideline covers alcohol problems among people over 10. It aims to prevent and identify such problems as early as possible using a mix of policy and practice.
NICE has also produced guidelines on:
- alcohol-use disorders: diagnosis and management of physical complications
- alcohol-use disorders: diagnosis, assessment and management of harmful drinking and alcohol dependence
- alcohol interventions in secondary and further education.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- price, availability and marketing
- licensing
- supporting children and young people aged 10 to 15 years
- screening young people aged 16 and 17 years and offering them extended brief interventions
- screening adults and offering them brief advice and interventions
- referral
Who is it for?
- Commissioners, managers and practitioners working in local authorities, the NHS, education and the wider public, private, voluntary and community sectors
- Members of the public
Is this guideline up to date?
July 2019: We have checked this guideline and are updating it. For more information, see the surveillance decision.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called alcohol-use disorders: preventing harmful drinking.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.