Findings from the current study indicate the importance of alcohol use by parents and peers on the initial levels of use and volume of use in middle school and of peers to growth in use across the middle school and high school periods. This confirms the predictions from the DDS model of the need to examine such specific social influences on problem behaviors (Capaldi et al., 2008) and indicates that limiting the exposure of adolescents to alcohol use by parents and peers is likely both to delay onset and reduce growth in use. As parental monitoring was protective against increased drinking, parents’ efforts to reduce the opportunities for youth to engage in alcohol use with their peers may be the most important prevention strategy at adolescence. The protective effect of parental monitoring may also indicate that interventions emphasizing positive parent-child relationships may also be helpful. The positive associations of antisocial behavior/deviant peer association and volume of use in high school would also indicate that limiting associations and unsupervised time with deviant peers should also have preventive effects. Finally, strategies to
