TUESDAY, Feb. 26, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- If you are to believe a new survey, children and teen-agers now account for a staggering one-quarter of all alcohol consumed in the United States.
And more than five million high school students -- or almost one-third of the total number nationwide -- say they binge drink at least once a month, meaning they gulp four-to-five drinks within an hour.
That's the unsettling conclusion of a controversial report issued today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), based at Columbia University.
The study was immediately criticized by the alcohol industry for greatly exaggerating the extent of the problem.
Joseph A. Califano Jr., CASA president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, said in a prepared statement, "Underage drinking has reached epidemic proportions in America.
"Alcohol is the fatal attraction for many teens," he added. "A major factor in the three leading causes of teen death -- accidents, homicide and suicide."
Added Susan Foster, vice president and director of policy research and analysis for CASA, said, "We have to recognize that this is an epidemic."
The 145-page report, titled "Teen Tipplers: America's Underage Drinking Epidemic," took two years to complete. It based its conclusions on information from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, published in 2000, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.
The trend in underage drinking is disturbing because research has shown that most heavy and problem drinkers have their first drink before they reach 21 years of age. The report also states that individuals who begin drinking before they are 15 are four times more likely to become alcohol-dependent than individuals who begin drinking at 21. Furthermore, the prevalence of lifetime alcohol abuse is greatest for those who have their first taste of alcohol at age 14, according to the study.
The report points fingers at a number of different sectors, including the entertainment industry, which has "glamorized" and "sexualized" alcohol. The report surveyed 81 G-rated animated films and said it found that almost half showed characters consuming alcohol, often without consequences.
The report also criticized the advertising industry for targeting kids. It cited the Budweiser beer commercials featuring talking lizards. It also noted that NBC recently ended a 50-year voluntary ban on airing liquor ads.
Parents, too, can unknowingly play a part in promoting underage drinking: One-third of sixth- and ninth-graders got alcohol from their own homes, the report found.
The liquor industry was incensed by the report and disputed the findings.
"Under its flawed interpretation, each American teen-ager and young adult who illegally drinks alcohol would have to consume 120 drinks per month" to make up the 25 percent consumption figure, Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., told the Associated Press.
Phil Lynch, a spokesman for Brown-Forman Corporation, which markets a variety of alcohol products, including Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey, echoed Coleman's sentiments to the AP. "It looks like Mr. Califano and CASA have adopted Enron's accounting practices," he said.
Whether the 25 percent figure is correct, underage drinking accounts for a large proportion of the alcohol industry's sales, CASA said. And it is calling on both parents and policy makers to help combat the problem.
Parents, said Califano, need to set rules and expectations for their children, monitor TV watching and talk frankly about alcohol use.
Lawmakers need to find ways to step up enforcement of underage drinking laws, hold parents and bars legally responsible for underage consumption of alcohol, and end alcohol ads on television, the report concludes.
"This report is a clarion call for a national mobilization to curb underage drinking," Califano said. "It sets the stage for parents, law enforcement, legislators, the entertainment industry and the alcohol industry to save millions of teens from destroying their lives through alcohol abuse."
What To Do
Find the complete CASA report by clicking here. To read it, you'll need Adobe's Acrobat Reader, which you can download here.
To learn more about work in the area of preventing alcohol-related problems, visit the Prevention Research Center.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has information on prevention, causes, consequences and treatment of alcohol-related problems.
For more information on drunk driving and what you can do about it, visit Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
