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Alcohol use is one the most important risk factors for illness and early death in Peru. Measures aimed at decreasing or controlling the great impact caused by alcohol in the Peruvian society are urgently needed. This article identifies and promotes the implementation of public health measures supported by sound scientific evidence of effectiveness or, in some cases, cost-effectiveness. The 10 evidence-based public health measures identified and described here represent a set if measures with high probability of success if implemented, as they are supported by scientific evidence. We recommend that governments, at the national or local levels, apply these measures not individually, but in combination, arranging them into a plan or roadmap, where the framework in which they will be applied must be established according to each context. Considering the available resources, some of these measures could be implemented in the short and medium term while the others can be set in the long-term.

Background: Epidemiological studies show wide variability in the occurrence of cannabis smoking and related disorders across countries. This study aims to estimate cross-national variation in cannabis users' experience of clinically significant cannabis-related problems in three countries of the Americas, with a focus on cannabis users who may have tried alcohol or tobacco, but who have not used cocaine, heroin, LSD, or other internationally regulated drugs., Methods: Data are from the World Mental Health Surveys Initiative and the National Latino and Asian American Study, with probability samples in Mexico (n = 4426), Colombia (n = 5,782) and the United States (USA; n = 8,228). The samples included 212 'cannabis only' users in Mexico, 260 in Colombia and 1,724 in the USA. Conditional GLM with GEE and 'exact' methods were used to estimate variation in the occurrence of clinically significant problems in cannabis only (CO) users across these surveyed populations., Results: The experience of cannabis-related problems was quite infrequent among CO users in these countries, with weighted frequencies ranging from 1% to 5% across survey populations, and with no appreciable cross-national variation in general. CO users in Colombia proved to be an exception. As compared to CO users in the USA, the Colombia smokers were more likely to have experienced cannabis-associated 'social problems' (odds ratio, OR = 3.0; 95% CI = 1.4, 6.3; p = 0.004) and 'legal problems' (OR = 9.7; 95% CI = 2.7, 35.2; p = 0.001)., Conclusions: This study's most remarkable finding may be the similarity in occurrence of cannabis-related problems in this cross-national comparison within the Americas. Wide cross-national variations in estimated population-level cumulative incidence of cannabis use disorders may be traced to large differences in cannabis smoking prevalence, rather than qualitative differences in cannabis experiences. More research is needed to identify conditions that might make cannabis-related social and legal problems more frequent in Colombia than in the USA.