@article{ref1,
title="Changes in the incidence of assault after restrictions on late-night alcohol sales in New Zealand: evaluation of a natural experiment using hospitalization and police data",
journal="Addiction",
year="2020",
author="Connor, Jennie and Maclennan, Brett and Huckle, Taisia and Romeo, Jose and Davie, Gabrielle S. and Kypri, Kypros",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="AIMS: To estimate the effect of national restrictions on late-night availability of alcohol on alcohol-related assault at a population level as indicated by (1) change in hospitalizations for weekend assaults and (2) change in the proportion of assaults documented by police that occur at night. <br><br>DESIGN: Evaluation of a natural experiment, involving: (1) pre-post comparisons of age-specific incidence rates, adjusted for seasonality and background trend using Poisson regression; and (2) interrupted time-series analyses, using seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) models of national data with no control site. SETTING: New Zealand. PARTICIPANTS: (1) Inpatients discharged from NZ hospitals following assault during the weekend (Friday-Sunday) from 2004 to 2016 (n = 14 996) and (2) cases of assault recorded by NZ Police from 2012 to 2018. INTERVENTION: introduction of national maximum trading hours for all on-licence (8 a.m.-4 a.m.) and off-licence premises (7 a.m.-11 p.m.), abolishing existing 24-hour licences, on 18 December 2013. MEASUREMENTS: (1) Age-specific incidence of hospitalization for assault on Friday, Saturday or Sunday from the national hospital discharge data set, excluding short-stay emergency department admissions and (2) proportion of weekly police-documented assaults occurring between 9 p.m. and 5.59 a.m., from NZ Police Demand and Activity data set. <br><br>FINDINGS: Following the restrictions, weekend hospitalized assaults declined by 11% [incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.89; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.84, 0.94], with the greatest reduction among 15-29-year-olds (IRR = 0.82; 95% CI = 0.76, 0.89). There was an absolute reduction (step change) of 1.8% (95% CI = 0.2, 3.5%) in the proportion of police-documented assaults occurring at night, equivalent to 9.70 (95% CI = 0.10, 19.30) fewer night-time assaults per week, out of 207.4. <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: The 2013 implementation of national maximum trading hours for alcohol in NZ was followed by reductions in two complementary indicators of alcohol-related assault, consistent with beneficial effects of modest nation-wide restrictions on the late-night availability of alcohol.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0965-2140",
doi="10.1111/add.15206",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/add.15206"
}