Resolving these discrepancies in alcohol trends among regularly or periodically administered general population survey series is essential for prioritizing prevention and treatment efforts. If rates of excessive alcohol use have increased as dramatically as suggested by NESARC trends, then primary universal prevention efforts should be prioritized and dramatic increases in the number of individuals seeking treatment can be anticipated. If, on the other hand, upward trends are more modest, then it might be more important to identify areas of progress and focus on subpopulations for which problems have increased. To this end, the objective of the work reported here was to conduct a meta-analysis of alcohol trend data across six publicly available and regularly administered nationally representative cross-sectional surveys. We focus on two measures: prevalence of any alcohol use and prevalence of engaging in one or more binge drinking episodes. These measures are available in six national surveys, allowing us to synthesize data from as many sources as possible. Further, binge drinking as measured by surveys is a strong predictor of both acute alcohol-related problems such as accidents and injuries,
