Youth Drinking

SURGEON GENERAL'S CALL TO ACTION TO PREVENT AND REDUCE UNDERAGE DRINKING 

Introduction to the Surgeon General's Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking At a March 6, 2007 news conference, Acting U.S. Surgeon General Kenneth P. Moritsugu issued the Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, appealing to the Nation to do more to stop current underage drinkers from using alcohol, and to keep other young people from starting. In this first Call to Action addressing underage drinking, Dr. Moritsugu laid out recommendations for government and school officials, parents, other adults, and young people. “Too many Americans consider underage drinking a rite of passage to adulthood,” said Dr. Moritsugu, in a news release. “Research shows that young people who start drinking before the age of 15 are five times more likely to have alcohol-related problems later in life. New research also indicates that alcohol may harm the developing adolescent brain. The availability of this research provides more reasons than ever before for parents and other adults to protect the health and safety of our nation's children.” The news release cites research from the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which estimates there are 11 million underage drinkers in the United States. Nearly 7.2 million are considered binge drinkers, typically meaning they drank more than five drinks on occasion, and more than 2 million are classified as heavy drinkers. Developed in collaboration with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Call to Action identifies six goals that:

• Foster changes in society that facilitate healthy adolescent development and help prevent and reduce underage drinking;
• Engage parents, schools, communities, all levels of government, all social systems that interface with youth, and youth themselves in a national effort to prevent and reduce underage drinking and its consequences;
• Promote an understanding of underage alcohol consumption in the context of human development and maturation that takes into account individual adolescent characteristics as well as environmental, ethnic, cultural, and gender differences;
• Conduct additional research on adolescent alcohol use and its relationship to development;
• Work to improve public health surveillance on underage drinking and on population-based risk factors for this behavior; and
• Work to ensure that policies at all levels are consistent with the national goal of preventing and reducing underage alcohol consumption.

“Alcohol remains the most heavily abused substance by America's youth,” said Dr. Mortisugu. “This Call to Action is attempting to change the culture and attitudes toward drinking in America. We can no longer ignore what alcohol is doing to our children.”

For a description of the Call to Action and the companion guides, see the Call to Action Publications page.

 

Leadership Response Leadership Co-Chair Mary Easley, First Lady of North Carolina, and Leadership Foundation board member Michele Ridge, former First Lady of Pennsylvania, spoke at the March 6 news conference, lauding the new report, and promising that Governors’ spouses and representatives around the country will use it to mobilize people in their States. Leadership’s goal is to work with this Surgeon General and future Surgeon Generals to highlight prevention of childhood drinking. To accomplish this goal, Leadership is holding news conferences and town meetings focused on the Call to Action, giving speeches and writing articles on childhood drinking, and working with State and local lawmakers to find effective ways to deny children access to alcohol, promote research and treatment programs, and other activities. See the Surgeon General in the States page for information on individual State activities.

Facts On Underage Drinking By Option

Underage drinking cost the citizens of The United States $68.0 billion in 2007. These costs include medical care, work loss, and pain and suffering associated with the multiple problems resulting from the use of alcohol by youth.1 This translates to a cost of $2,280 per year for each youth in the State. Excluding pain and suffering from these costs, the direct costs of underage drinking incurred through medical care and loss of work cost the United States $22.3 billion each year.

Youth violence (homicide, suicide, aggravated assault) and traffic crashes attributable to alcohol use by underage youth in the United States represent the largest costs for the State.  However, a host of other problems contribute substantially to the overall cost.  Among teen mothers, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) alone costs the United States $1,227 million. Check the Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center for data on costs for your state.

 

Option One:  Reach Children with Problems Early 

• Nearly 8000 children between the ages of 12 and 17 start to drink each day in the USA. [SAMHSA]
•  In 2007, 7.8 percent of people age 12 or older—an estimated 19.3 million people—needed treatment for an alcohol problem in the past year. [SAMHSA]
• 18- to 20- year-olds have the highest prevalence of DSM-IV Alcohol Dependence [ NSDUH]
• 5.5 percent of youth ages 12-17 meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohl abuse or dependence [NSDUH, SAMHSA]
• Annually 2,500 Ohioans, ages 12-20, are admitted for alcohol treatment [ ODADAS] { check with your single state agency for similar data for your state}
• As many as 300,000 fourth and fifth graders (3.7% of fourth graders and 4.6% of fifth graders) begin drinking alcohol before reaching the sixth grade [Pride Survey, 2009]. These students are between 9 and 11 years old. http://www.pridesurveys.com/customercenter/ue08ns.pdf

  Option Two: Remove Access and Incentives  

• Alcohol use increases dramatically during adolescence. About 15% of 12 year olds have had a whole drink; by age 15, approximately 50 % of boys and girls have had a whole drink of alcohol; by age 21, approximately 90 percent have done so. [ NSDUH, SAMHSA] 
• Underage drinkers account for 21.1 percent of all the alcohol consumed in Ohio. [?CASA, 2003]
•  [??? look at the CASA report for your state data]
• A survey of over 6000 teenagers revealed : Teenagers usually get their alcohol from persons 21 or older. The second most common source for high school students is someone else under age 21, and the second most common source for 18- to 20-year-olds is buying it from a store, bar or restaurant (despite the fact that such sales are against the law).[APIS, NIAAA]
• 76 percent of Ohio students in grades 9-12 have consumed alohcol. [YRBS] - You can check out your state data on the Links from the State Data Page.
• Research suggests that people who have expectations of more positive experiences form drinking tend to drink more that others and are at highest risk for excessive drinking. Children in general shift from a primary emphasis on the negative and adverse effects of drinking alcohol before age 9 to a primary emphasis on the positive and arousing effects of alchol by about age 13. [US Surgeon Genreal Call to Action, 2007]
• In 1998, States spent $81.3 billion – 13% of their budgets to deal with the substance abuse and addiction. For each dollar, 96 cents went to shovel up the wreckage of substance abuse and addiction and only 4 cents wne to prevent and treat it. [CASA, see their website for state by state data]

  Option Three: Help Children through Difficult Times in Development  

• Children need help growing up safe and healthy.
• Children who start to drink alcohol before the age of 15 are at great risk for short and long-term consequences, such as other substance abuse problems, risky sexual behavior, unintentional injuries, car crashes, and physical fights. [US Surgeon General Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, 2007]
•  Adolescence isa time of heightened risk taking, independence seeking and experimentation, and alcohol has been shown to impair one’s ability to evaluate risk and reward when making decisions. [US surgeon General Call to Action, 2007]

Formal Conversations/Deliberations: Where and How?

Formal Conversations
 

Formal conversations are more like deliberations where a group of persons discuss the reasons for and against a measure or solution.  In this instance, three options (solutions) have been proposed around which the deliberation will occur.  These include:

• Option One:  Reach Children with Problems Early
• Option Two:  Remove Access and Incentives; and
• Option Three:  Help Chidren through Difficult Times in Development

These deliberations often end with some sort of follow-up action.  Perhaps it is an individual parent/guardian who resolves to talk to their child about alcohol, or perhaps it is a group of individuals who want to band together to build or enhance community efforts designed to  implement the proposed solutions.  For more information on deliberations, visit the National Issues Forum website.

When organizing a formal conversation/deliberation/forum, the first thing to remember is that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  Who would be interesed in the issue of childhood drinking and who might be willing to help organize a formal conversation:

1. Librarians, parent associations, teachers, and school administrators are valuable sources of information about youth, peer groups, and youth trends.
2. Service clubs, churches, and faith-based organizations are groups that cut across every facet of community life; partnering with them proves the odds of having broad and diverse participation.
3. It is important to get views from people whose voices or perspectives are not often heard in public forums. Childhood drinking is an issue that affects families at all income levels, all races, and all ethnic groups. Recruiting participants from nontraditional settings, such as workforce training programs, English-as-a-second-language programs, GED workshops, and community colleges, may be good places to find individuals whose voices have not been heard on this issue.
4. The media are the best sources of public advertising. Some public television stations and newspapers cover forums. Some newspapers have published issues in brief or issue maps which can be found in the “Engage” portion of wwww.alcoholfreechildren.org. Citizens can also write letters to the editor.
5.  Chambers of Commerce and members of the business community have been valuable assets in community enhancement projects. 

The second thing to remember is that there are prepared documents to help you.  The documents and resources listed below can help you make choices about this question:  How could our community prevent and reduce drinking by children aged 9-15?    They include:

• A sixteen-page discussion guide titled, "Childhood Drinking:  How Can We Prevent and Reduce the Number of Children Drinking Alcohol?"
• An eight-page guide to holding a conversation using the discussion guide
• A participant questionnaire for use  post-discussion
• A four-page "issue map" that outlines possible solutions for each of three options presented--to be used as a participant handout
• A link to a video hosted on U-Tube that introduces the three options--to be used as an introduction to the discussion
• State Data on Childhood Drinking Including Data on the Number of Children Who Drink Before Age 13

 

 Related Links to Videos on U-Tube about Childhood Drinking

• Lisa's Story
• David's Story

Sir Liam Donaldson on drinking in childhood - a short clip about the issue in Great Britain