ABSTRACT This component application addresses the question: How does the physical availability of alcohol affect alcohol sales and related problems? Along with lower beverage prices, alcohol researchers have identified greater physical availability of alcohol through retail alcohol outlets as a population health risk. However, since alcohol sales data at the local level, within community areas, are rarely available, the mediating impacts of sales in the availability sales problem causal sequence are not identified and likely confounded with other economic and physical availability effects. Among these, most prominent are routine activities related to purchases and consumption of alcohol at retail outlets that affect problems independent of sales (e.g., crowding at bars). Although measured at the state level in the US for many years, alcohol sales are not typically measured at the local level. Local alcohol sales data provide the opportunity to distinguish effects of sales from other activities that affect problems. In turn, findings about these relationships can direct local regulation at characteristics of outlets that affect problems (e.g., crowding) vs characteristics of outlets that affect sales (e.g., drink specials). The primary regulatory consequence of the unavailability of local sales data is to make it very difficult for community planners and public health practitioners to advocate for appropriate local availability controls. The proposed studies will strengthen our understanding of these relationships using postcode data from the Western Australia Alcohol Indicators Database (WAAID; 1991-2020), an Australian state with an alcohol retail licensing system and socioeconomic conditions similar to states in the US. WAAID enables us to: (1) Measure the extent to which the physical availability of alcohol (i.e., concentration of different types of alcohol outlets) within neighborhoods and communities affects sales, and (2) Distinguish the degree to which concentrations of alcohol outlets per se, independent of sales made through those outlets, are associated with alcohol related problems. The proposed work is ambitious but feasible, relying upon theoretical and empirical achievements in availability studies over the past 40 years, a systematic approach to spatial analysis models of availability effects, and the historically deep skills and experiences of the project team. Critically, the project geographic information system (GIS) has been developed and fully supported by our collaborators at the National Drug Research Institute (NDRI), Curtin University, Western Australia. Analysis activities can begin upon onset of the project.