Persistently high impact of alcohol use on fatal violence in Lithuania despite strengthening alcohol control policies, 2004-19

Abstract

A strong association between alcohol and violence and homicide has been well established. Much less is known about the relationship between alcohol policies and the perpetration of alcohol-involved homicides, especially in the Central and Eastern European region. Despite recent progress, Lithuania still has one of the highest alcohol per capita consumption and homicide rates in the European region. Using quarterly data on homicide perpetrators in Lithuania for 2004-19, interrupted time-series were performed to evaluate whether the 2017 and 2018 alcohol control policies had an impact on the rate of perpetrators of homicide and the proportion of perpetrators under the influence of alcohol using a generalized additive model and generalized linear model, respectively. Although a rapid decline was observed in both the absolute numbers of homicides and rates of homicide perpetrators between 2004 and 2019, the proportion of homicide perpetrators under the influence of alcohol remained high. The analyses revealed that there was no significant effect of either of the two alcohol control policies on the rate of homicide perpetrators or the proportion of perpetrators under the influence of alcohol. The problem of persistently high occurrence of alcohol-involvement in homicides cannot be addressed by implementing alcohol control policies alone and thus, requires more inter-sectorial policy actions. More research is needed to understand homicide contexts and factors from both the victim and perpetrator perspectives.