Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, alcohol researchers began raising concerns about its impact on drinking patterns and the potential for increased harms (Neufeld et al., 2020, Rehm et al., 2020). Although still limited, emerging evidence has shown that alcohol use increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (Barbosa et al., 2020, Killgore et al., 2020, Pollard et al., 2020), Australia (Biddle et al., 2020), Poland (Chodkiewicz et al., 2020), and New Zealand (Huckle et al., 2020), among other countries (Schmidt et al., 2021). However, changes in drinking behavior appear to have varied by gender. In the United States, at least two studies have found greater increases among women than men in both any drinking and heavy drinking (Barbosa et al., 2020, Pollard et al., 2020).
