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Underaged Drinking is Cited as the Number One Preventable Contributor to Teen Deaths

If you’ve only got time to read one page about underage drinking, make sure this is it. All of these alarming facts are cited at the bottom of the page.

No other threat is more grossly under-appreciated, nor more widely misunderstood than that of underage drinking. By simply preventing your children from drinking, you dramatically lower their risk of death due to accidental injury, homicide, suicide, car crash, fall, fire, drowning, overdose, other violent crime, and sexually transmitted disease. Kids who don’t drink perform higher at school, obtain better jobs, express higher life satisfaction, and have a lower incidence of teen pregnancy, depression, and illicit drug use. Despite decades of scientific research and millions spent on public information campaigns, many parents unwittingly contribute to their children’s demise.

To some, underage drinking is a harmless phase. It is a stage of life which they themselves passed through, and one which they have grown to accept as a natural social process. Most often, those who hold this view mistakenly believe:

1. Most consequences of underaged drinking are minor.
2. Underage drinking is inevitable. I did it and so will my kids.

This view can be self-affirming for someone who feels that he or she has emerged from their own drinking experiences seemingly unscathed. It can also be a comforting outlook for someone who feels powerless, or hypocritical, in trying to prevent underage drinking with their own kids. About 45% of parents today drank while they were teens. Many emerged from this experience with an unnaturally lax outlook on underage drinking. Unfortunately, you don’t have to look very far to see how dangerous this disposition is. If you have a teenager today, drinking alcohol is far and away the leading preventable threat to their life and to the productivity of their future.

The good news is that we can prevent underage drinking. It doesn’t have to be difficult and it doesn’t have to involve any fuss. The solutions are discussed on our “Preventing Underage Drinking Page”. Before talking solutions though, its important to get a better understanding of the problem.

Underage Drinking: The Not-So-Hidden Dangers

• Underage drinking kills more kids than all other illicit drugs combined.(15)
• 8th graders who drink heavily are 3 times more likely to attempt suicide(16)
• Casual underage drinking is strongly linked to risky sexual behavior, adolescent sexual assaults, teen pregnancies and STD’s(17)
• Teen alcohol abuse impairs development of the hippocampus and has been linked to cognitive impairment. Deficits in short-term memory and learning ability are believed to persist into adulthood.(18)
• Underage drinkers are 18 times more likely to use marijuana.(20)

According to a comprehensive study conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services(1), kids who admit to drinking while underage are:

• 9.5 times more likely to drive while drunk
• 8.5 times more likely to develop serious problems with illicit drugs
• Over 5 times more likely to develop a criminal record
• Almost twice as likely to have a C+ or lower average

A 2007 United States Surgeon General’s report, titled “A Call to Action”, highlighted the tragic 200% increase in child mortality that is linked to alcohol use during the teenage years.(3) Alcohol-related car crashes are the number one killer of teens. Homicides, suicides and drownings, which are the next three leading causes, were all found to be closely associated with alcohol use.(4) 181,000 of the alcohol related emergency room visits evaluated in the 2006 D.A.W.N. report involved underage drinkers. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that Alcohol use by underage drinkers results in $3.7 billion a year in medical care costs due to traffic crashes, violent crime, suicide attempts and other related consequences. The same report calculated the total annual cost of alcohol use by underage youth in America to be $52.8 billion.(2)

Most Take Their First Drink by Age 14: Unlike many adults, kids drink for the sole purpose of getting drunk. In fact, 85% of older teens admit that they drink for the purpose of getting high.(20) Kids today aren’t drinking the way previous generations did. Increasingly potent advertising campaigns, marketing which directly targets youth, pop-culture sensationalization and uninformed parental views have all played a role in decreasing the age at which youth try alcohol. According to the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism, the average age at which kids try alcohol today, is 14 years old. In 1965, the average age was 17.5 years old. (5,6) Tragically, this first drink often seals the fate of many otherwise bright futures. Kids who drink before the age of 15 are four times as likely to become alcoholics than those who wait until age 19. Longitudinal studies on alcohol use patterns have found that of those who reported trying alcohol prior to the age of 15, a full 40% went on to become an alcoholic within ten years.(7) Another substantial portion went on to embrace harmful abuse patterns that negatively impacted their lives.

Young bodies are much more sensitive to alcohol than are those of mature adults. Teen alcohol abuse has been shown to negatively impact a number of important cognitive and developmental processes that are occurring through the adolescent years. (12) This and other alcohol related consequences strip away the once bright future possessed by many teens. Diminished or failed education, early pregnancies and STD’s, domestic violence, alcohol related health disorders, addiction to other drugs, accidental injuries and failed dreams most often accompany the pattern of substance abuse. An extensive longitudinal survey of over 43,000 American adults revealed that the earlier the respondents reported drinking in life, the more likely they were to have unintentionally injured themselves or someone else while drinking. (13) According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, those who tried alcohol prior to that age of 15 were twelve times more likely to be accidentally injured in an alcohol related incident over their lives. (14)

Patterns Continued Into College: Teen substance abuse is a pre-cursor to a life of substance abuse. College students who got drunk at least once prior to age 19 are more likely to be diagnosed as alcoholics and to meet the definition of a “heavy drinker”. These students are also more likely to report willfully engaging in drunk driving, accepting a ride from a driver that has been drinking, and to have sustained an alcohol related injury that required medical attention. (10) According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an estimated 1151 college kids fatally overdose on alcohol each year. The NIAAA found that alcohol contributes to over 500,000 college-student injuries per year. (9) In 2005, it was found that at least 696,000 college students were assaulted by another student who had been drinking. (11) Despite these public figures, 44% of students attending four-year colleges admit to binge drinking. (10) In fact, full-time college students admit to drinking much more frequently, and at higher levels, than kids who are not full-time students. (1) It’s not surprising that today, only 33% of those who go to college will obtain their bachelors degree in four years. After six years, only 56% of those whose parents sent them off to college, will return home with a degree in hand.

Patterns Continue Into Adulthood: We wish it could be said that underaged drinking is something most kids leave behind them at high school or college, but decades of research have proven that not to be true. Contrary to common assumption, underage drinking is not a phase. It is an ominous predictor of what is to come. Click here to learn how these patterns manifest in the adult years. It is not surprising that American mortality rates spike again at age 21. The legal drinking age corresponds with a 20 percent increase in the number of days on which people drink. It also corresponds with a 14% increase in fatal car crashes, a 30% increase in alcohol overdoses and alcohol-related deaths and a 15% increase in suicides. The cumulative effect is a 9 percent increase in the mortality rate at age 21. After this age, mortality begins a steady decline which continues through retirement age. (19)

Alcohol Tutorial: Page 4 of 23

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Sources:

1. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Results from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings. NHSDA Series H–22, DHHS Pub. No. SMA 03–3836. Rockville, MD: SAMHSA, Office of Applied Studies, 2003. Available online at: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda/2k2nsduh/Results/2k2Results.htm.)
2. Costs of underage drinking. David T. Levy, Ted R. Miller, and Kenya C. Cox. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. Rockville MD. October 1999.
3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Surgeon General’s Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General, 2007.
4. Children of Alcoholics Foundation, Children of Alcoholics in the Medicaid System: Hidden Problems, Hidden Costs, 1990
5. Newes-Adeyi, G.; Chen, C.M.; Williams, G.D.; and Faden, V.B. NIAAA Surveillance Report No. 74: Trends in Underage Drinking in the United States, 1991–2003. Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2005.
6. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Results from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings. NHSDA Series H–22, DHHS Pub. No. SMA 03–3836. Rockville, MD: SAMHSA, Office of Applied Studies, 2003.
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9. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, April 9, 2002, Task Force on College Drinking
10. Weschler, Henry & Nelson, Toben F. “What We Have Learned from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It.” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 69: 481-490. 2008
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17. Abbey, A.; Zawacki, T.; Buck, P.O.; et al. Alcohol and sexual assault. Alcohol Research & Health 25(1):43–51, 2001. AND Abbey, A. Alcohol–related sexual assault: A common problem among college students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol (Suppl. 14):118–128, 2002. AND Sen, G. Does alcohol increase the risk of sexual intercourse among adolescents? Evidence from the NLSY97. Journal of Health Economics 21: 1085–1093, 2002.
18. Spear, L. Adolescent brain and the college drinker: Biological basis of propensity to use and misuse alcohol. Journal of Studies on Alcohol (Suppl. 14):71–81, 2002. AND Brown, S.A.; Tapert, S.F.; Granholm, E.; and Delis, D.C. Neurocognitive functioning of adolescents: Effects of protracted alcohol use. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 24(2): 164–171, 2000. AND Tapert, S.F., and Brown, S.A. Neuropsychological correlates of adolescent substance abuse: Four–year outcomes. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 5(6):481–493, 1999. AND Tapert, S.F.; Brown, G.G.; Kindermann, S.S.; et al. fMRI measurement of brain dysfunction in alcohol–dependent young women. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 25(2):236–245, 2001. AND De Bellis, M.D.; Clark, D.B.; Beers, S.R.; et al. Hippocampal volume in adolescent–onset alcohol use disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry 157(5):737–744, 2000.
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20. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (2009); Columbia University. National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XIV: Teens and Parents. NY, NY.