HAS AWARENESS OF THE ALCOHOL WARNING LABEL REACHED ITS UPPER LIMIT

Has awareness of the alcoholic beverage warning label reached its maxi mum? This study tracks changes in the level of awareness among a sampl e of 7334 inner-city African-American gravidas seeking prenatal care b etween May 1989 and June 1993. Previously, we found that a significant increase in awareness of the warning label occurred in March 1990. In the current analysis over a 50-month period, the level of awareness c ontinued to increase through December 1992 and then leveled off, sugge sting a negatively accelerated growth function. The logistic function fitted to the awareness curve predicts that the upper limit of awarene ss in this population has been reached (the predicted upper limit bein g 81.5%), In addition a legit regression analysis showed that women wh o did not know about the warning label were more likely to be over 29 years of age, Heavier drinkers were 1.25 times more likely to be aware of the label. Among those drinkers who were not aware of the label, 3 0% drank at both conception and antenally, thus putting their fetus at high risk for alcohol-related birth defects.