Copenhagen Open Day put alcohol age limits and local action in focus

01.04.2026 - NordAN’s Open Day in Copenhagen on March 24 brought together member organisations and invited partners from across the Nordic and Baltic region for a focused half-day working meeting at the WHO Regional Office for Europe in UN City. The day was chaired by NordAN president Mariann Skar, and the meeting concentrated on alcohol age limits, youth drinking and current policy developments, with Denmark as a natural focal point, but always in a wider regional context. The format was designed as a collaborative working meeting rather than a conference, creating space for exchange, comparison and discussion.

The programme opened with an introductory regional overview by Lauri Beekmann, executive director of NordAN, who mapped recent attempts to change alcohol age-limit related rules across the Nordic and Baltic region. His presentation showed five live cases moving in opposite directions: Latvia attempted and failed to raise the purchase age from 18 to 20, Greenland is still considering raising the sales and serving age from 18 to 21, while Sweden, Norway and Estonia each saw efforts in a more liberal or labour-flexibility direction. The main point was that the region is not moving in one single direction. Instead, age-limit policy remains politically alive, and debates are often shaped by a tension between public health arguments on one hand, and labour-market or market-access arguments on the other. That gave the whole meeting a strong political context from the start.

Maria Neufeld from WHO Europe followed with a research and policy update that grounded the discussion in evidence. One of the strongest messages in her presentation was that alcohol remains the leading risk factor for premature death and disability among young people, and that in the youngest age group it is now ranked higher than tobacco. She also showed that alcohol causes a striking share of deaths in younger adult age groups in the WHO European Region, especially through intentional and unintentional injuries. Her presentation did not treat age limits as symbolic measures, but as serious health protection tools. A particularly noteworthy example came from Finland’s 1969 reduction of the legal drinking age from 21 to 18. According to the evidence she highlighted, those who gained access earlier faced higher risks of alcohol-related illness and death even decades later, reinforcing the point that higher minimum ages can have protective effects far beyond youth itself.

Neufeld also placed Europe’s legal age-limit picture in a broader comparative perspective. Between 2012 and 2022, ten of the 53 WHO European Region member states reported increases in minimum age limits, and in several countries earlier distinctions between beer, wine and spirits were removed in favour of one common threshold. At the same time, her overview showed that some countries still allow minors to buy or consume certain alcoholic drinks under specific conditions. That combination of stricter trends in some places and lower thresholds in others helped explain why age limits remain such an important and contested policy field. She also drew attention to new evidence from Lithuania indicating that a full alcohol marketing ban was associated with substantial reductions in adolescent intoxication, binge drinking and alcohol use, underlining that age limits work best as part of a broader alcohol policy package.

Morten Skov Mogensen from Blue Cross Denmark then brought the discussion directly into Danish public opinion. His presentation showed that support for raising the alcohol age limit to 18 in Denmark is not marginal, but solidly mainstream. In 2023, 63% of Danes supported raising the age limit for all alcohol purchases to 18, and in 2025 the picture remained similar, with roughly three out of five still supporting such a move. One particularly notable finding was that 58.9% also supported prohibiting alcohol sales to under-18s in upper secondary education institutions, where such sales are still allowed. This mattered because it challenged the familiar argument that stricter rules would be politically unrealistic. The message from the polling was quite the opposite: public support is already there, and it extends not only to retail sales in general but also to spaces closely tied to youth life. Among the voters of different political parties support was strongest among voters of Socialdemokratiet, at 67.7%, and SF, at 66%, while backing was above 47% in almost all other party groups too, with Borgernes Parti standing out as the clear exception at 27%.

Freja Jørgensen from Alkohol & Samfund then examined why that level of public support has still not led to a full 18-year limit in Denmark. Her presentation added the political anatomy behind the issue. She outlined the 2023 Danish Prevention Plan, which introduced a number of alcohol-related measures, including stronger age control, higher fines, a ban on proxy sales, a lower alcohol-strength threshold for 16-year-olds, nightlife-zone restrictions and electronic age verification for online sales. But one of her clearest messages was that this package stopped short of the measure that many health actors considered most effective, a full 18-year age limit for all alcohol sales. She argued that the political window for such a reform was effectively lost when the Prevention Plan was adopted without it.

Jørgensen’s presentation also made visible the political and commercial forces around the Danish debate. She described how stakeholder support for raising the age limit had been strong, including the earlier “Drukfri Ungdom” coalition of 25 organisations, but also how these actors had limited room to influence the outcome once the government settled on a weaker compromise. Another noteworthy part of her presentation was the attention she gave to industry influence. She pointed to the role of the Danish Brewers’ Association and to campaigns that framed the alcohol industry as part of the solution, while in practice working against stricter age regulation. This gave the discussion a sharper edge, because it showed that the Danish debate is not simply about public health evidence versus public scepticism, but also about political choices, lobbying and narrative power. The Danish Cancer Society’s presentation by Nynne Johanne Sahl Frederiksen and Stine Røhe broadened the lens from formal policy to youth culture and communication. They began from a public health standpoint, reminding participants that alcohol increases the risk of more than 200 conditions and diseases, including cancer, that around 3% of all cancer cases in Denmark are caused by alcohol, and that roughly 3,000 Danes die every year as a result of their alcohol consumption. But the most striking aspect of their presentation was how clearly it linked these long-term harms to the social realities of adolescence. Denmark, they showed, continues to stand out for its liberal and permissive youth drinking culture, with high intoxication levels and strong normalization.

What gave their presentation particular depth was that they did not treat youth drinking as merely an individual choice problem. One quoted testimony from a 16-year-old described alcohol as a kind of “friend” and as a ticket into the social scene, something difficult to refuse if one wants to belong. That insight led directly to their core message: to change young people’s alcohol habits, work must happen on several levels at once. Their “Fuld af liv” approach therefore combines policy and legislation, parent-focused efforts, and attempts to shape a youth and party culture where no one feels pressured to drink. Just as importantly, they described a learning-based model where campaigns are tested, evaluated and adjusted through research, anthropology, behavioural analysis and ongoing engagement with young people themselves. Their communication principle, using humour rather than judgement and showing alternatives instead of moralizing, was an especially noteworthy practical lesson from the day.

Nijolė Goštautaitė Midttun from the Lithuanian Tobacco and Alcohol Control Coalition then offered one of the clearest policy case studies of the day, placing her presentation in the context of Lithuania’s decision to raise the alcohol purchase age to 20. Her starting point was refreshingly careful: there is no “silver bullet”, but comprehensive alcohol control measures, including the WHO Best Buys, can reduce both overall consumption and harm. Lithuania’s case was presented not as proof that a single legal age change explains everything, but as evidence that sustained, evidence-based policy can make a real difference. Among the strongest findings she presented were the shifts in youth drinking trends between 2015 and 2024. Lifetime alcohol use among Lithuanian school students fell from 87.0% to 72.6%, past-year use from 69.0% to 55.9%, and past-30-day use from 34.0% to 24.4%, the lowest level since 2003.

Her presentation also went deeper than headline declines. She showed that perceived availability had gone down, although access clearly remained substantial, and that heavier episodic drinking had dropped sharply, while some other indicators, such as recent severe intoxication, had improved less since 2019. One especially important nuance was the changed gender pattern. In the most recent Lithuanian ESPAD results, girls reported higher alcohol involvement than boys on several key indicators, including lifetime use and heavy episodic drinking. That made her overall message more credible and more useful: Lithuania’s direction is clearly positive, but the picture is not simple, and policy success still leaves unresolved challenges. At the same time, she showed that support for raising the alcohol purchase age remains high, with 67% positive and only 25% negative in survey data.

The meeting concluded with a presentation from Dag Rekve of WHO on “Localizing SAFER”, which shifted the discussion from national legislation to the question of implementation. His core message was that alcohol policy succeeds or fails at local level. National governments can set frameworks, but communities are where licensing systems, enforcement, monitoring, screening, compliance checks and pricing measures actually become real. One particularly strong point in his presentation was that communities should not be seen only as implementers of national policy. They also help shape stronger policy over time by feeding back experience, evidence and political momentum. In that sense, local action is not downstream from policy, it is part of how policy becomes stronger.

Rekve also stressed the practical conditions that make community-level alcohol policy work: multisectoral cooperation, governance structures, monitoring, training, political support and protection from industry interference. His case examples from Uganda, Nepal and Ireland showed different ways in which local systems can translate broad alcohol strategy into real-world change. That made for a fitting end to the Open Day. The Copenhagen meeting began by showing that age-limit rules remain politically contested across the Nordic and Baltic region, and it ended by reminding participants that even the best policies mean little unless communities have the capacity and independence to make them work in practice.