As graduation parties rage and millions of high school students
look forward to a summer free from classes, the increased
opportunity for alcohol-related automobile accidents has many
parents worried.
Recent media reports on youth drinking certainly offer cause for
concern. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
(NIAAA) Task Force on College Drinking issued a number of
disturbing statistics in April, including the fact that 1,400
college students die from unintended alcohol-related injuries each
year.
In an April 12, 2002 letter to the New York Times editor,
Ohio First Lady Hope Taft wrote, "Binge drinking is a problem that
campuses often inherit: many kids come to college with established
habits of drinking." Do college drinking problems begin in high
school? Gallup data indicate that contrary to popular belief, the
majority of high school students are not heavy drinkers.
Although it is illegal for anyone under age 21 to buy or drink
alcohol in all 50 states, some minors do. A May 2001 Gallup Youth
Survey (GYS)* found that 21% of teens between the ages of 13 and 17
admit to drinking alcohol. Ten percent of them say they drink more
than they should. Fifty-four percent say that it's very or fairly
easy to get alcoholic beverages. Americans have been persistently
warned about the perils of drunk driving, yet in a 2000 GYS**, 5%
of teens admitted to having driven shortly after drinking alcohol.
Thirteen percent of teens say they have been passengers of a drunk
driver.
According to Gallup data, teen-agers are drinking less than they
used to and fewer teens drink at all. Gallup trends dating back to
1987 show the percentage of teens who admit to drinking hovering
between 21% and 25%. However, in 1982, 41% of kids admitted to
drinking.
Several fretful cover stories have proclaimed increased
alcoholism among teen-aged girls: In February 2002, the National
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University
reported that 41% of female ninth-graders drink and 20% binge drink
(compared to 40% and 22%, respectively, for ninth-grade boys). But
Gallup numbers don't reflect this trend. According to the May 2001
GYS, it's true that young teen-age girls, aged 13 to 15, are
slightly more likely to admit to drinking than boys (5% and 3%,
respectively). But the older teens get, the more the drinking gap
widens in the opposite direction. Twenty-five percent of 16- to
17-year-old boys who drink say they "drink more than they think
they should" -- 11 percentage points higher than the same statistic
for girls (14%). Of all kids between the ages of 13 and 17, 12% of
boys say they drink more than they think they should, compared to
9% of girls.
There's no question that heavy drinking takes place among
college students, and drinking is also a problem for many high
school-aged kids. But Gallup data suggest that the incidence of
teen drinking is significantly lower than it was 20 years ago.
Parents and educators can take heart that the long-term perspective
suggests a positive trend that will hopefully continue through the
21st century.
*Findings are based on telephone interviews with a national
cross section of 501 teen-agers, aged 13 to 17, conducted in May
2001. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95%
confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±5%.
**Findings are based on telephone interviews with a national
cross section of 501 teen-agers, aged 13 to 17, conducted in
January through April 2000. For results based on this sample, one
can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is
±5%.
