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A federal study released today says that more than half of 12–20-year-olds have had a drink. Illinois is in the middle when it comes to underage binge drinking: between 19.1 and 21 percent of underage drinkers in Illinois binge drink, which is better than Wisconsin (between 24 and 31 percent) but worse than Utah (14 to 17.2 percent).
Among all underage current drinkers, 31.0 percent paid for the alcohol the last time they drank, including 9.3 percent who purchased the alcohol themselves and 21.6 percent who gave money to someone else to purchase it. Underage persons who paid for alcohol themselves consumed more drinks on their last drinking occasion (average of 5.9 drinks) than did those who did not pay for the alcohol themselves (average of 3.9 drinks).More than one in four underage drinkers (25.8 percent) indicated that on their last drinking occasion they were given alcohol for free by an unrelated person aged 21 or older. One in sixteen (6.4 percent) got the alcohol from a parent or guardian, 8.3 percent got it from another family member aged 21 or older, and 3.9 percent took it from their own home.
According to the study, around 5,000 people under 21 die every year "as a result of underage drinking." [Trib, full study]
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Um, where are the error bars on that graph?!
CHARTS! GRAPHS! very executive, you shouldve at least offered us a beer while we read these charts and junk.
Binge drinking is defined as what exactly? Wikipedia tells us
5 or more drinks (male), or 4 or more drinks (female), in about 2 hours.
But it's also any "heavy drinking".
Frankly, those numbers seem low to me. Yes, teens drink, sometimes to excess. Let's all panic and keep them in bubbles til they're 21.
Look, some folks are going to become alcoholics, drive drunk, do awful and terrible things. But they're the minority. The panicky alcohol zero-tolerance policies that schools are adopting are just making kids sneakier and stressing them out.
Driving them to drink.
From the study:
"Binge use – Five or more drinks on the same occasion (i.e., at the same time or within a couple of hours of each other) on at least 1 day in the past 30 days (includes heavy use).
Heavy use – Five or more drinks on the same occasion on each of 5 or more days in the past 30 days."
So if you have 5 drinks, of any alcoholic content, one one occasion in a month you're a binge drinker?
What's a drink consist of? Glass of wine? Shot of whiskey?
I'm not just quibbling here, but if my (hypothetical) kid drank a bunch of wine coolers at a party I'd be far less concerned than if they were drinking less on a more frequent basis.
One drink =
12 oz beer
6 oz of wine
1 oz of hard alcohol
We beat the South? Are you kidding me?