Alcohol abuse is a major problem,
especially among students on and around college campuses.
We use the mathematical framework of [16]
andstudy the role of environmental factors on the long term dynamics of an alcohol drinking population.
Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses are carried out on the relevant functions (for example,
on the drinking reproduction number and the extinction time of moderate and heavy drinking because of interventions)
to understand the impact of environmental interventions on the distributions of drinkers.
The reproduction number helps determine whether or not the high-risk alcohol drinking behavior will spread and become persistent in the
population, whereas extinction
time of high-risk drinking measures the effectiveness of control programs.
We found that the reproduction number is most
sensitive to social interactions, while the time to extinction of high-risk drinkers
is signicantly sensitive to the intervention programs that reduce initiation, and
the college drop-out rate. The results also suggest that in a population, higher
rates of intervention programs in low-risk environments (more than interven-
tion rates in high-risk environments) are needed to reduce heavy drinking in
the population.