- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Teen
tipplers drink a quarter of all alcohol consumed in the United States,
encouraged by television ads and parents who see underage drinking as a
rite of passage, researchers said on Tuesday.
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- To drink legally in the United States you must be 21
but Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
found 31 percent of high school students binge drink, defined as five drinks
in a row, at least once a month.
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- "Underage drinking has reached epidemic proportions
in America ... and parents are too often unwitting co-conspirators who
tend to see drinking and occasional bingeing as a rite of passage,"
said Joseph Califano, the group's president and a former U.S. secretary
of Health, Education and Welfare.
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- Researchers reanalyzed data from the 1998 National Household
Survey on Drug Abuse to calculate the total number of drinks consumed by
12- to 20-year-olds as a proportion of all adults.
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- The report found those under 20 drank 63,230 alcoholic
beverages a month, an average of 0.9 a day, and slightly more than 25 percent
of the 251,194 alcoholic drinks consumed by the sample as a whole.
-
- "Underage drinking also accounted for up to $27
billion of the $108.4 billion in consumer expenditures for alcoholic beverages
in the U.S. in 1998," the report added.
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- UNDERAGE TIPPLES BY BUSH TWINS
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- Teen drinking sporadically hits the headlines, especially
when President Bush's twin daughters are involved.
-
- College students Barbara and Jenna Bush, 20, attended
alcohol awareness classes after being caught underage drinking last year.
-
- The Columbia report highlighted the under-15s as an alcoholic
trouble spot. Califano said that since 1975, the number of children who
begin drinking aged 15 or under, had jumped by almost a third, from 27
to 36 percent.
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- "And those who begin drinking before age 15 are
four times likelier to become alcoholics than those who do not drink before
age 21," he added.
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- The report pooled data from five different surveys and
separately polled 900 adults to gauge attitudes to alcohol with a margin
of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
-
- Nearly three-quarters of adults surveyed said they supported
restrictions on alcohol advertising.
-
- Two months ago, NBC ended a decades-old voluntary abstinence
when it became the first major network to broadcast a hard liquor advertisement
on national television.
-
- Lawmakers blasted NBC, a unit of General Electric Co.,
saying it was putting profits before prudence.
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- The Columbia center's director of policy research, Susan
Foster, said the group would be recommending an end to all television ads
for alcohol, which would include beer as well as spirits. But she acknowledged
NBC's decision complicated the situation.
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- "It's certainly going to be an uphill battle. But
what we hope to do is break open a national dialogue," Foster said
in a telephone interview.
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- The center also wants the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy to broaden its focus and include alcohol in its media
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