For adolescents and adults attending primary care settings who had experienced harm due to excessive drinking but were not alcohol dependent, moderate‐quality evidence shows that administration of a brief intervention (primarily feedback on screening results plus structured advice about risks of heavy drinking and ways to reduce consumption) led to reductions in the quantity of alcohol consumed (by 20.08 g/week; all results on average), binging episodes (by 0.08 binges/week), drinking frequency (0.13 days drinking/week), and numbers of people classified as heavy (426 vs 520 per 1000 people) or binge (318 vs 397 per 1000 people) drinkers over a 12‐month follow‐up period. All intervention effects were fairly small, albeit robust. In contrast, one trial with 906 participants reported that women who did not receive the brief intervention were 30% more likely to binge drink, but this evidence was classified as very low quality; apart from this one result, adverse events either were not observed or were similar across groups.