Introduction The World Health Organization's European Charter on Alcohol states that: All children and adolescents have

the right to grow up in an environment protected from the negative consequences of alcohol consumption and, to the extent possible, from the promotion of alcoholic beverages. The Charter also calls on Governments to Promote health by controlling the availability, for example for young people, and influencing the price of alcoholic beverages, for instance by taxation. The WHO Charter has been signed by Member States of the European Union, including the UK. In the interwar period in the UK young people aged 18-24 were the lightest drinkers in the adult population and the group most likely to abstain. Nor did alcohol play a significant part in the youth culture that came into existence in the 1950s, this being more likely to involve the coffee bar than the pub. It was not until the 1960s that pubs and drinking became an integral part of the youth scene. By the 1980s, those aged 18-24 years had become the heaviest drinkers in the population, and the group least likely to abstain. By the year 2002, hazardous drinking i.e. drinking bringing the risk of physical or psychological harm now or in the future, was most prevalent in teenagers and young adults. In women, hazardous drinking reached its peak in the age group 16-19, with just under one third (32%) having a hazardous drinking pattern. In men the peak was found in the 20-24 age group, with just under two thirds (62%) having a hazardous drinking pattern. These changes were accompanied by a decline in the age of onset of regular drinking. Nowadays, most young people are drinking regularly, though not necessarily frequently, by the age of 14 or 15. One survey

found that more than a quarter of boys aged 9 - 10 and a third of those a year older reported drinking alcohol at least once in the previous week, normally at home. Most surveys suggest the trend of drinking for effect and drinking to intoxication grew during the period up to around 2003/4, although it may now have peaked. A related aspect is the partial merging of the alcohol and drug scenes in the context of youth culture, with alcohol being one of a range of psychoactive products available on the recreational drug market. A large survey of teenagers in England, Wales and Scotland found that by age 15/16 binge drinking was common, as was being seriously drunk. In this study, binge drinking was defined as consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in a single session. The growth in binge drinking may be regarded as particularly significant as there is evidence that drinking, and especially heavier drinking, in adolescence increases the likelihood of binge drinking continuing through adult life.

Related literature1: College drinking problems, deaths on the rise Alcohol-related deaths, heavy drinking episodes and drunk driving have all been on the rise on college campuses over the past decade, a new government study shows. Using figures from government databases and national surveys on alcohol use, researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found that drinking-related accidental deaths among 18- to 24-year-old students have been creeping upward -- from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005. At the same time, the proportion of students who reported recent heavy episodic drinking (sometimes called "binge drinking") rose from roughly 42 percent to 45 percent, and the proportion who admitted to drinking and driving in the past year increased from 26.5 percent to 29 percent. "The fact that we're not making progress is very concerning," says lead researcher Ralph Hingson, Sc.D., M.P.H., director of the NIAAA's division of epidemiology and prevention research.

"The irony," he adds, "is that during this same time period, our knowledge of what works as far as intervention in this age group has increased. That knowledge isn't yet being put into place." Hingson and his colleagues report the findings in a special supplemental issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs devoted to college drinking problems. Fourteen studies in the issue report the results of projects funded by the NIAAA's Rapid Response to College Drinking Problems initiative -which, between 2004 and 2005, selected 15 college campuses with serious student-drinking issues to work with the agency and other experts in developing programs to combat the problem. The resulting programs ranged from the individual level -- like counseling for students found to have drinking problems -- to community-level efforts that involved law enforcement and residents of neighborhoods surrounding college campuses. All showed their own benefits. It's likely, according to Hingson, that a mix of programs at these different levels is needed to best address problem drinking on college campuses. "There's no silver bullet for this," he says, "but the more levels at which we try to intervene, the more effective we'll be. Colleges and communities need to work together, because neither can do it alone." Broader legislation may also make a difference. Hingson and his colleagues found that although drinking and driving was more common among college students in 2005 than in 1998, the trend actually began to reverse course during that time: in 2002, just over 31 percent of students had driven under the influence in previous year; in 2005, that figure was 29 percent. Hingson points out that in 2000, only 17 U.S. states had made it illegal to drive with a blood alcohol content of .08 percent or higher; by 2005, all had adopted that limit. That, he says, may at least partially account for the dip in college students' drinking and driving. Similarly, state laws that set the legal drinking age at 21 have been credited with reducing alcoholrelated road deaths. An "interesting" finding from this study, Hingson notes, is that the increases in heavy episodic drinking, drinking and driving, and alcohol-related deaths were seen among 21- to 24year-olds, and not 18- to 20-year-olds.

Aug. 31, 2010 One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking. But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that for reasons that aren't entirely clear abstaining from alcohol does tend to increase one's risk of dying, even when you exclude former problem drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the beverage of choice is red wine) is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don't have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.

But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It's true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stressrelated illnesses over long periods. (They also don't get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.) But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who were not current drinkers, regardless of whether they used to be alcoholics, second highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers. The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over 69% of the abstainers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died. These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who don't drink, even if they never had a problem with alcohol. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health. As I pointed out last year, nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party. The authors of the new paper are careful to note that even if drinking is associated with longer life, it can be dangerous: it can impair your memory severely and it can lead to nonlethal falls and other mishaps (like, say, cheating on your spouse in a drunken haze) that can screw up your life. There's also the dependency issue: if you become addicted to alcohol, you may spend a long time trying to get off the bottle. That said, the new study provides the strongest evidence yet that moderate drinking is not only fun but good for you. So make mine a double. The original version of this article misidentified abstainers (people in the study who were not current drinkers, regardless of their past drinking status) as people who had never drunk. The article has been edited to reflect the correction

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200,00.html#ixzz1yIHS7IZp

Alcohol-Related Traffic-Risk Behaviors Among College Students Become Worse at Age 21

ScienceDaily (May 31, 2010) Alcohol-impaired driving and associated motor-vehicle accidents are a major public-health problem. National studies have shown that approximately 25 percent of college students report that they have driven while intoxicated in the past month, and an even greater percentage report having driven after having any amount of alcohol and/or ridden with a driver believed intoxicated. A new study on how these behaviors may change as students move through their college years has found that prevalence and frequency of alcohol-related traffic-risk behaviors took a significant upturn when students turned 21 years old.
"Drinking and driving endangers the safety of not only the drinking driver and passengers, but also other individuals on the road," said Amelia M. Arria, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and corresponding author for the study. "College students have limited driving experience, making drinking and driving possibly even more hazardous. [While] other studies have examined drinking and driving among college students, to our knowledge this is the first to have examined how the behavior changes over time in the same sample of students." "Other studies have demonstrated that freshmen tend to drink more than upperclassmen," added Robert B. Voas, senior scientist and director of the Impaired Driving Center at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. "This may have led some to the erroneous conclusion that existing college alcohol-safety programs are effective. This study tends to demonstrate that alcohol-related problem behaviors increase

with age, perhaps due to greater opportunities for risk taking such as owning a car or the ability to patronize bars and purchase alcohol. If college programs were successful, we should be able to at least prevent an increase in risky drinking and driving during the period the students are at the university." Arria and her colleagues recruited 1,253 first-time, first-year students (645 females, 608 males) attending a large, mid-Atlantic university. All were invited to be interviewed annually for four years regarding their alcohol-related traffic risk behaviors (with 88-91% follow-up rates); access to driving a car was also determined annually. Three alcohol-related traffic risk behaviors were examined: riding with a driver who was under the influence of alcohol (RWID), driving after drinking any alcohol (DAD), and driving while intoxicated (DWI). Results showed that risky alcohol-related traffic behaviors are quite common among college students. "In the preceding year, nearly half of underage students with access to a car drove after having anything to drink and one in five drove while intoxicated," said Arria. "For instance, at 20 years of age, eight percent drove after drinking any alcohol, and 20 percent drove while intoxicated. Moreover, among all 20-yearolds -- regardless of car access -- 43 percent rode with an intoxicated driver." Males were more likely to engage in these behaviors than females. "There were noticeable increases in all three measures of alcohol-related traffic risk -- RWID, DWI and DAD -- when students reached the legal drinking age of 21," said Arria. "Our findings call into question the assertions of some advocates who claim that lowering the drinking age to 18 would be a useful strategy for reducing harm associated with alcohol consumption. The present findings are consistent with numerous prior studies showing that increased availability of alcohol is associated with a greater level of problems especially underage drinking-and-driving fatal crashes." Both Voas and Arria said these findings support maintaining the minimum legal drinking age at 21. "In fact," said Arria, "lowering the drinking age to 18 would likely result in a surge of alcohol-related traffic problems given that younger students would have even less driving experience." "The continued growth in the percentages of youths who are reporting dangerous drinking/driving behaviours over the time they are in the university suggests that existing university prevention programs are not very effective," added Voas. "The high percentage of first-year students who engage in risky drinking/driving behaviors parallels previous studies showing that a high proportion of high-school students engage in such risk behaviours. While this is not new, it serves to emphasize the continuity of the problem. University administrations should become well aware of this problem and ensure it receives special attention when students arrive on campus." Arria agreed. "College administrators should be more proactive in their approach to reducing underage drinking through a multi-pronged approach that includes health professionals identifying and intervening with individuals who are at risk for alcohol-related problems, as well as parents expressing strong disapproval of underage drinking and accurately communicating the health and safety risks associated with underage alcohol use to their children. Law enforcement officials also have an important role, and perhaps it is time for increased levels of high-visibility enforcement of underage drinking laws to occur on or around college campuses." Arria said that she and her colleagues will continue to study the same cohort to examine post-college trends.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100531190857.htm

As might be expected given the excessive drinking habits of many college students (Wechsler et al. 2002), this population commonly experiences blackouts. White and colleagues (2002c) recently surveyed 772 undergraduates regarding their experiences with blackouts. Respondents who answered yes to the question Have you ever awoken after a night of drinking not able to remember things that you did or places that you went? were considered to have experienced blackouts. Fiftyone percent of the students who had ever consumed alcohol reported blacking out at some point in their

lives, and 40 percent reported experiencing a blackout in the year before the survey. Of those who had consumed alcohol during the 2 weeks before the survey, 9.4 percent reported blacking out during this period. Students in the study reported that they later learned that they had participated in a wide range of events they did not remember, including such significant activities as vandalism, unprotected intercourse, driving an automobile, and spending money. In a subsequent study, White and colleagues (2004) interviewed 50 undergraduate students, all of whom had experienced at least one blackout, to gather more information about the factors related to blackouts. As in the previous study, students reported engaging in a range of risky behaviors during blackouts, including sexual activity with both acquaintances and strangers, vandalism, getting into arguments and fights, and others. During the night of their most recent blackout, most students drank either liquor alone or in combination with beer. Only 1 student out of 50 reported that the most recent blackout occurred after drinking beer alone. On average, students estimated that they consumed roughly 11.5 drinks before the onset of the blackout. Males reported drinking significantly more than females, but they did so over a significantly longer period of time. As a result, estimated peak BACs during the night of the last blackout were similar for males (0.30 percent) and females (0.35 percent). As Goodwin observed in his work with alcoholics (1969b), fragmentary blackouts occurred far more often than en bloc blackouts, with four out of five students indicating that they eventually recalled bits and pieces of the events. Roughly half of all students (52 percent) indicated that their first full memory after the onset of the blackout was of waking up in the morning, often in an unfamiliar location. Many students, more females (59 percent) than males (25 percent), were frightened by their last blackout and changed their drinking habits as a result.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm