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Link:http://www.campusprogress.org/opinions/4278/binge-drinking-purge-the-drinking-ageBy Kathleen ReevesColleges and college students get blamed for binge drinking fatalities, but maybe we should blame the high drinking age.
(istockphoto.com)When a recent study found that binge drinking is increasing among college students, the New York Times called upon colleges to “look at their own policies” before blaming the drinking age. The study also claims that since the drinking age was raised to 21, binge drinking has declined among 18- to 20-year-olds who are not in college. The study, and the way it’s been interpreted, taps into a long-running but under-discussed debate about whether or not the drinking age, or “legal 21,” is reasonable.
Colleges have been responding to high rates of binge drinking on campus by cracking down, or reaching out, or some combination of the two. Meanwhile, binge drinking-related fatalities continue to rise. A study released last week by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported 1,825 alcohol-related deaths among 18- to 24-year-old college students in 2005, compared with 1,440 in 1998.
Some people are taking issue with the study. The numbers were found by a curiously circuitous route: the estimated percentage of alcohol-related deaths in the age group was multiplied by the total population of the age group, then multiplied by thirty percent, since thirty percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are in college. (Since hospitals don’t make a note of whether or not a patient is in college, perhaps there was no better way.)
James Turner, dean of the department of student health at the University of Virginia, argues that you can’t apply a fatality rate found in one population to any other population and expect accurate results. Turner, also the executive director of the National Social Norms Institute, is more optimistic about college drinking trends. He points to a 2008 University of Virginia study which found that using social marketing is effective in reducing binge drinking. Researchers found a decline in certain “alcohol-related consequences,” like injury, drunk driving, and unprotected sex while under the influence.
The author of the NIAAA study, Ralph Hingson, argues that the study’s figures were probably conservative, if anything. But he doesn’t support lowering the drinking age, maintaining that binge drinking among under-21s went down when the higher legal drinking age went into effect.
Hingson’s study found “heavy episodic drinking” to be more frequent among 21- to 24-year-olds than among 18- to 20-year-olds. But the fact that legal drinkers may drink on more occasions than illegal drinkers does not necessarily mean that the legals are drinking in a more dangerous way than the illegals. In fact, those under 21 may drink more alcohol on a single occasion—or in fewer hours—than those over 21 because they have to do so without trying to get caught. The clandestine nature of illegal drinking makes it more concentrated, more severe, and more deadly, as proponents of a lower drinking age have pointed out.
Another study, from Washington University in St. Louis, clarifies the question a bit. It found that binge drinking among teenagers and young adults has declined overall since the legal drinking age went into effect, but that binge drinking has increased among college students. The study’s results are also broken down by gender. The study found that binge drinking among college women has gone way up, while it’s remained about the same among college men.
These studies support what people on both sides of the drinking age debate recognize: that binge drinking is a part of college culture. The question is whether the law affects drinking habits—or rather, how.
The author of the Washington University study, Richard A. Grucza, argues that the higher drinking age has reduced binge drinking and related fatalities. Proponents for lowering the drinking age, like John McCardell of the Amethyst Initiative, have argued that the higher drinking age has made college students under 21 less safe because they drink in more extreme and more secretive ways.
The Washington University in St. Louis report claims:
Since the minimum national drinking age of 21 was signed into law in 1984, it has become more difficult for younger teenagers to get alcohol and apparently has contributed to lower binge drinking rates among those under 18.
[Grucza] says stable rates of binge drinking among college students and increases in binge drinking among women have offset some of that improvement and developing a better understanding of the reasons for those demographic trends, rather than lowering the drinking age, will assist future efforts to prevent binge drinking.
It’s true that an understanding of communities enriches any public health effort. But any inquiry into the lives and beliefs of 18- to 20-year-old college students will find that these students want to drink will find a way to drink. The legal drinking age is so easy to circumvent on college campuses that it has ceased to be (and probably never has been) a deterrent.
Both studies—and the New York Times—argue that the drinking age is working, based on the following logic: college-enrolled 18- to 20-year-olds are drinking more, while those under 21 and not in college are apparently deterred by the drinking age. The problem, they say, is with the college environment, not with the law. College administrators need to do more to curb binge drinking.
Anyone who’s been to college recently knows that colleges are far from ignorant of the problem of binge drinking. They invest significant amounts of money and time in alcohol education and in the enforcement of the law—and these efforts haven’t worked. To assert that college campuses (and their lack of enforcement) are the problem ignores the question of a solution. Colleges exist, the culture of binge drinking exists there, and serious efforts of colleges to change this culture have failed.
Researchers who argue that legal 21 has been effective rely heavily on drunk driving statistics. It’s important to consider that legal 21 was only one component of a significant national effort to reduce drunk driving. Thanks to national programs and campaigns, our attitudes about drunk driving have changed. Based on the degree to which the legal drinking age is flouted, it’s more likely that the new public awareness around drunk driving is more important than the drinking age itself, and that if the age were lowered, drunk driving would not simply bounce back to where it was before 1984.
It’s still unpopular to argue for a lower drinking age, especially among the major government health agencies (the NIAAA is part of the National Institutes of Health, which also funded the Washington University study). But it’s not unreasonable to expect those on the ground, like college administrators, to be more open and honest about the failure of legal 21. Any change in our thinking on the legal drinking age will come from them. The Amethyst Initiative is a promising start, and college students who believe in lowering the drinking age should use the model of that organization to start a dialogue on their campuses. For though the organizations behind these two, recent studies don’t support lowering the drinking age, their findings are unequivocal: Binge drinking on college campuses is not going away, and while we decide what to do about it, college students are dying.
Link:http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_12800545?source=rssBy Amanda Baumfeld
Exterior of the Terraza Jamay Montebello Ballroom. (SGVN/Staff Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz)MONTEBELLO - The city will shut down a 34-year-old Whittier Boulevard banquet facility after a police investigation uncovered the sale of narcotics and alcohol
The City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to revoke the license of Centro Social Terraza Jamay, a club at Whittier Boulevard and 10th Street.
The banquet facilities business license has been suspended since May 8 after undercover officers reported buying ecstasy and saw minors drinking alcohol, officials said.
"I don't see anyway that we could have not taken the action we took," said Councilman Bill Molinari. "The activities going on is something that I could not even comprehend let alone happen in our community and to the young children of Montebello."
Owner Ruben Chavez who has made his livelihood off Terraza Jamay is very "distraught," according to his attorney George Pacheco.
"The city could have and should have given him (Chavez) a second chance especially because he had virtually no incidents before the alleged violations," Pacheco said. "He basically did everything the city wanted him to and they still made the decision."
Chavez was not available for comment Thursday.
Chavez may appeal the decision, said Pacheco, who is also the legal counsel and president of the Montebello Police K-9 Association.
A 13-month investigation into Terraza Jamay started in March 2008 after the club began hosting rave dances for minors, officials said.
Officials from police and fire departments, Alcoholic Beverage Control, code enforcement and residents all spoke during a June 24 public hearing, with most offering complaints about the business.
Of those, Cpl. Jennifer Garcia said she attended the club undercover and saw at least 100 minors high on ecstasy.
Children as young as 12 were high, and giant pacifiers and glow sticks were for sale, she said.
Pacheco argued that the city did not provide proper written notice to Chavez about the allegations but the city sees it differently.
"Every single time the police department responded to this business Mr. Chavez was put on notice, verbal notice," said Mike Huntley, director of planning and community development. "The city does not take revoking a business license lightly, there has to be a lot of case history."
The city has revoked about a handful of business license in the past, officials said.
With two large banquet rooms Terraza Jamay is known for hosting weddings and Quincea eras. Chavez has a number of pending contracts he will now not be able to carry out.
"We are trying to figure everything out and see what we are going to do," said Manager Mike Soto.
Link:http://www.thenewsjournal.net/details.cfm?id=2663A month after being warned by local authorities about selling alcohol without a liquor license, a Corbin club is preparing to open an "upscale restaurant" in an effort to qualify for a license and bolster membership.
The Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks Tri-County Lodge No. 2826, located on Main Street in Corbin, has announced plans to open a restaurant in the near future. Lodge member Jim Vance, a local property developer and businessman, said extensive renovations are currently underway to install a full kitchen in the space formerly owned by Tri-County Mortgage.
The move, he said, was in response to a warning by local police about sales of alcohol to club members.
"Somebody wrote a letter on us to the state," he said. "We are just going to do it all legal. We are going to put in for a license to sell it at the restaurant."
The letter Vance refers to was written by Corbin resident Kurt Kraus and sent, via email, to Mike Razor, Kentucky Office of Alcoholic Beverage Control Director of Enforcement on June 4. The letter was obtained by the News Journal through a request made under the Kentucky Open Records Act.
In the letter, Kraus writes: "My problem is not with the operation of the Elk club but whether or not they are allowed to 'serve' alcoholic beverages for a fee. Many persons have reported to me that beer can be purchased for [50 cents] per glass and mixed drinks for $2.00. This would seem to be in direct violation of the Kentucky beverage control laws."
Further in the letter, Kraus claims the club was basically "boot-legging" and that "enforcement is being overlooked because the City Manager of Corbin and a local county judge are both members."
Kraus was contacted by the News Journal but refused to comment.
Corbin City Manager Bill Ed Cannon formerly served as Exalted Ruler of the Lodge until he resigned from the group in June. He said he quit due to concern over alcohol sales. Whitley District Judge Cathy Prewitt was also a member of the lodge.
Corbin Police Colonel Bruce Rains, who serves as the town's Alcoholic Beverage Control Officer, strongly denied Kraus' accusation that local police overlooked alcohol sales at the lodge because of who belonged to the club. He said police were not aware alcohol was being sold until the complaint was forwarded to him from the Kentucky ABC.
"We didn't show them any kind of favoritism," Rains said. "We talked about it with them and let them know they couldn't do it and if they were, don't ... I won't be intimidated and I am not for sale. I can assure you if anyone in this town does start selling liquor [without a license] and we find out they will be busted."
Corbin Police Chief David Campbell said he and Rains went to the club to see if alcohol was being sold and talked to some members. Both said they observed no illegal activity, but warned the group against selling alcohol.
The Elks Lodge 2826 moved into its current location last year. The new lodge underwent significant renovations, including the recent installation of a bar and the construction of a covered deck in the rear of the building. Vance said the current renovations to turn the lodge into a restaurant would hopefully be finished in a few months. The restaurant will be open to the public. He said the group has about 100 members now and plans to recruit 100 more by year's end and have 400 members by the end of next year.
Link:http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1317893.htmlBy SCOTT CANONIt’s easy to understand why our troops are drinking more, and that their drinking is becoming more troubling.
Two wars. Constant deployments. Combat stress. Friends killed or maimed. Time away from home.
It’s less easy to solve the problem.
The military, by accounts without and within, has addressed the problem head-on. The Pentagon is doing more to identify those with drinking demons, to do that without destroying careers, and to get personnel the counseling and other help that might make a difference.
Still, the long stretches at war interrupted by too-brief time at home that so many see as the root cause will prove far more difficult to remedy.
“I’m not sure there will ever be good enough programs for the need,” said Joyce Raezer at the National Military Family Association. “There needs to be more time at home for the family to reintegrate.”
The Army made a goal of making time between combat deployments last twice as long as overseas tours. Yet rotations come at a much faster clip.
One result is a rise in drinking between deployments. Army psychologists in 2003 noted alcohol abuse or alcoholism in a little more than six in 1,000 soldiers. Today, that rate nearly has doubled to 11.4.
Marines with alcohol or drug problems rose 12 percent from 2005 to 2008. From October through June, 1,197 were busted for drunken driving — 12 percent above the previous full year.
A recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that 43 percent of active-duty troops binge drank in the previous month. It was heaviest among the youngest, and the researchers concluded alcohol often hurt job performance.
Finally, a British study of U.S. troops found binge drinking among about one in five active-duty troops before combat deployment, and one in four after spending time in a war zone. Continued heavy drinking or serious alcohol problems were less common — found in about one in 20 troops — but also went up after deployments. The numbers were similar for the National Guard and Reserve, although deployments had a slightly more profound impact.
“Soldiers who just have been in a combat zone” — where they are barred from any alcohol at all — “blow off a little steam and sometimes overdo it,” said Sgt. Maj. Karl Groninger, the command sergeant major at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
The awkwardness of re-entry into their civilian lives — “finances … relationships … parenting” — pose as many problems as overcoming their trauma of combat, he said.
“All those things play against each other,” the sergeant major said. “That’s what usually leads to the drinking.”
Help is waiting, and he said that even though troops have traditionally been reluctant to accept counseling or other assistance that might chip away at a soldier’s sense of sturdy independence, “that stigma isn’t what it used to be.”
It is logical that troops returning from war zones might want to knock back a few beers. Their civilian peers — been to a college campus lately? — certainly drink plenty.
Research shows, however, that those in uniform are more likely to be heavy drinkers. The problem comes for the few who don’t know when to stop. And their numbers have risen in stride with the stress of repeated deployments.
Yet the chief of the Army’s substance abuse program, Les McFarling, said there appeared to be a declining rate of drinking problems for any particular soldier after the second or third deployment — perhaps because the soldier had simply gotten older. But the Army is still concerned about alcoholism.
Link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071102337.htmlauthor nameThat would be a bad way to deal with binge drinking on campuses.YOUR picture content HERESOME THINGS only seem like a good idea at 3 a.m. Increasingly, the Amethyst Letter, which more than 100 college presidents and chancellors signed last year to advocate rethinking the drinking age, looks like one of them. A study just published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that binge drinking has decreased nationwide with the increased drinking age -- everywhere but on college campuses.
A variety of factors may contribute to the decline in binge drinking among young non-students -- the presence of parents, the demands of jobs, more difficult access to drinking-age peers. But the lessons for school administrators are clear. Where the drinking age is enforced, harmful drinking behaviors have been in overall decline. But on campuses, binge drinking has remained stable -- or gotten worse. And in areas such as women's binge drinking that have increased in the population at large, the increase for college students has outpaced that for their non-student peers.
Those on college campuses who favor a lower drinking age point out that students will decide to drink regardless of the law, and forcing them to do so in secret and illegally will make behaviors such as binge drinking harder to monitor. But outside college campuses, where underage drinking is clearly prohibited, young people more often have made the decision not to drink. This, in turn, has helped drive down drunk driving, assault and other unsafe behaviors. For further proof, college administrators should consider their drug policies; the perception that drug use will not be tolerated can and does influence students' choices.
The journal's study drives home the fact that, when young people know that the law will be upheld, they adjust their behavior. It's time for college administrators to stop passing the buck to the drinking age and start taking their in loco parentis role more seriously. Instead of complaining about the drinking age, they should try enforcing it.
Link:http://www.theasiannews.co.uk/news/s/1125546_police_target_teen_boozersby Helen Johnson POLICE will be stepping up patrols in the areas around high schools next week to coincide with end of term celebrations as part of a crackdown on teenage binge drinking.
The move is one of a number of initiatives the council and police are carrying out this summer after receiving £20,000 of government funding to tackle young boozers.
The funding will allow the police to confiscate alcohol, break up groups of young people who are getting drunk, and get persistent offenders to sign contracts promising to behave.
Other measures include reinforced alcohol zones, in which police can confiscate alcohol from both adults and young people.
Trading Standards will also be carrying out more test purchases in a bid to catch out irresponsible retailers selling to underage drinkers.
Any vulnerable young people found out late at night or drunk will be taken to a place of safety until they can be collected by a parent or guardian. These young people will then be offered the chance to become involved in activities, including residential trips.
The money has been allocated to councils across the country by school’s secretary Ed Balls, who launched a binge drinking crackdown in response to feedback from police and youth services who say that alcohol remains a major factor influencing low level youth crime and anti-social behaviour.
Jeanette Staley, acting community safety manager at Rochdale Council, said: "We recognise that over the summer the likelihood of alcohol-related disorder is more common which is why we have developed a vast range of preventative and enforcement initiatives which aim to keep young people safe and out of trouble during the holidays.
"We will be working very closely with our partners, especially the police, to minimise youth nuisance as much as possible.
"Our youth detach teams will be taking to the streets at weekends and evenings to enrol young people into a structured programme of positive activities and the police will be stepping up their patrols looking to confiscate alcohol.
"We will soon be launching a campaign which aims to banish boredom by inviting young people to do something productive with their time."
Welcoming the funding, Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, said: "Rochdale is in the top five most affected areas by excessive drinking in England, so it’s clear we have a big problem.
"Many people have told me that binge drinking is really holding our town centre back and people don’t want to go out there at night because teenage drinking is out of control. As the second largest borough in Greater Manchester, Rochdale should rightly have a town centre that’s economically strong and that we’re all proud of. We won’t achieve this unless we clamp down on binge drinking."
Link:http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1302730?UserKey=BY CAMERON BROOKSPOLICE HOPE PILOT SCHEME WILL CHANGE ATTITUDES
WALK ABOUT: Kenny MacAskill on patrol in the streets of Aberdeen with Inspector Brian ShanksA new scheme aimed at tackling alcohol-fuelled violence has been welcomed by campaigners in the north and north-east.
Martin Greig and Norman Macleod, who chair Grampian and Northern police boards respectively, said they were keen to see the results of an initiative being piloted by Fife Constabulary to educate people about the dangers of binge drinking.
They said the scheme was worth testing to try to change deep-rooted cultural attitudes towards alcohol, but warned it must not be regarded as an alternative to a “stiff sentence”.
Under the so-called alcohol diversion scheme being piloted at Kirkcaldy for six months, drunken offenders will escape a £40 police fine if they agree to attend an education programme.
Fife Assistant Chief Constable Andrew Barker said: “Antisocial behaviour and low-level crimes contribute to a wider fear of crime within our communities.
“This project is a first in Scotland and offers us the opportunity once again to be involved in a programme that seeks to address the root cause of alcohol abuse.”
Mr Greig said: “I do not know if this scheme will help but it is definitely worth going down the education route because binge drinking is a cultural problem on a national scale and people become trapped in a vicious cycle.
“But it cannot be regarded as a soft option and an alternative to a fairly stiff sentence.”
Grampian Joint Police Board member Kevin Stewart said: “Any possible solution should be looked at to try and resolve this very serious problem.
“Unfortunately, some people regard fines as nothing at all and they do not act as a deterrent.”
Councillor Bill Cormie, a member of Aberdeen licensing board who accompanied Grampian Police on a tour of city streets to witness at first hand drink-fuelled violence, also welcomed the scheme.
“What I saw was horrific and very worrying so I fully support any initiative that would help resolve what is going on,” he said. “We cannot just sit back and accept drink-fuelled violence as the culture in the city centre.”
Although he welcomed the opportunity to test the scheme, which could be extended across the country in the future, Mr Macleod is sceptical about how effective it will be.
“I think in the instance of a first offence the scheme could possibly be an avenue to go down but I am not sure this is the answer for individuals who continue to reoffend,” he said. “People should be properly punished for crimes.”
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill also toured Aberdeen city centre earlier this year and said he understood the difficulties in policing busy towns at weekends. He spoke to taxi drivers, door staff and publicans and said it is essential people are educated in drinking responsibly.
A spokesman for Tayside Police said the force would await the results of the pilot scheme with interest.
The Scottish Government wants to introduce a minimum price for alcohol and end cut-price supermarket deals.
