Choose Responsibility

A new Associated Press study, announced yesterday, has revealed that 157 college-age people (aged 18 to 23) drank themselves to death between 1999 and 2005, and that the number of alcohol-poisoning deaths per year rose from 18 in 1999 to 35 in 2005.  Interestingly, 83 of the people who died were under the legal drinking age of 21. 

Additional analysis revealed that college students are more likely to die from binge drinking-related alcohol poisoning than non-college students, and that freshmen are most at risk during their first semester at college.  With the legal drinking age set at 21, people (especially underage drinkers) are dying from binge drinking, and the number of deaths is continuing to climb due to the common mentality of “if you’re under 21 and someone’s got alcohol, you’ve got to drink it, because you never know when somebody’s going to have it again.”   

Some colleges have begun to adopt programs to educate students about responsible drinking—an important first step that will hopefully have some good consequences in the future.  Regardless, this new study really points out a vital question:  Is 21 working?

The results of a nationwide survey looking at the social context of underage alcohol use, performed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, were released today.  This National Survey on Drug Use and Health looked at many aspects of alcohol use and drinking behaviors amongst 12-20 year olds, and the major finding capturing the headlines is that underage drinkers are obtaining alcohol from adults, including parents and guardians.  Blaming parents and adult family members for underage alcohol use and labeling them as “enablers” may be a hasty conclusion, however.  The study indicates that 40% of underage drinkers obtained alcohol from an adult (someone over 21) for free in the past month.  However, one in four youths received alcohol from an unknown adult, and only one in twelve youths received alcohol from a parent or guardian. 

More importantly, the study does not clearly specify how parents are giving their kids alcohol.  A glass of wine at a family dinner might be statistically the same as a mother buying a keg for a son’s graduation party; however, the implications of these actions are much different.  Conclusions from the study stress that parents should be involved by providing proper guidance and ensuring their kids’ safety by preventing them from the dangerous act of drinking.  Is it possible, however, that allowing a son or daughter a glass of wine with dinner helps teach responsible drinking, and thus can be considered parental guidance?  A recent Time Magazine article discussed in a June 20^th post does an excellent job debating this issue.

In general, we are having a hard time seeing how the results of this study support a legal age 21.  Kids are finding alcohol and drinking underage, and one in five underage drinkers have binged at least once in the last month.  Moreover, this drinking is happening in private, unsupervised locations, and over half of underage drinkers have drank in someone else’s room or house during the past month.  If you ask us, that is more scary than the fact that some youths are sharing a beer with mom and dad. 

We encourage you to visit this ABC article for more information, links, and comments.

“Should You Drink with Your Kids?,” published in the June 30^th Issue of Time Magazine, is an insightful and balanced article on underage drinking and the drinking age.  Aside from addressing multiple points of view on the topic of underage drinking and drinking with parental supervision, we think that it does an excellent job of citing appropriate research and raising some important points about drinking and public health that are at the center of many of Choose Responsibility’s ideas.  We particularly like its attention to the problem of binge drinking and what may be contributing to increases in binge drinking rates over the last few years.  We encourage you to check out the article and, as always, we welcome your comments and questions.

We have previously commented on the growing popularity of “alcopops” and our concern that their advertised reputation as sweet drinks masking the taste of liquor, while delivering intoxication, makes them appeal to underage drinkers.  Alcopops are usually sold in stores’ beer aisles, also making them popular among underage drinkers, who most frequently choose beer as their drink of choice.  Large-scale consumption of these drinks by young and underage drinkers fuels the binge-drinking problem in this country, and so we were happy to read that California has recently decided to regulate and tax alcopops as distilled spirits and not as beers.  The change, which will take place in October, will tax alcopops with the current liquor tax of $3.30 per gallon, up from $0.20 per gallon, the current tax on beer.

We believe that increasing the tax on alcopops will help decrease their consumption amongst underage drinkers since a higher price tag should decrease their appeal amongst consumers.  In fact, past studies have indicated that throughout history, higher taxes on alcohol have led to a decreased likelihood of heavy drinking and binge drinking.  Higher alcohol prices have also been correlated with decreased rates of underage drinking, sexually transmitted diseases, and traffic fatalities in the past…nothing wrong with that! 

Recent comments on our May 27^th, 2008 post argue that using higher taxes to deter alcohol consumption is a neo-prohibitio