Parents Play a Role in Access and Availability

  • 69% parents and 63% of teens believe that it is generally easy for underage youth to obtain alcohol.[i]
  • In 2006, 31% of youth reported they obtain alcohol from their parents, and 27% reported that they obtain alcohol from other adults.[ii]
  • In 2009, 55.9% of current drinkers aged 12 to 20 reported that their last use of alcohol in the past month occurred in someone else’s home. And 29.2% reported that it had occurred in their own home.[iii]
  • 32% of parents and teens surveyed indicated they know of parents who host teen alcohol parties.[iv]
  • 23% of teens attended a party where alcohol was served to underage youth in the past two months. Of those youth, 12% reported that they drank alcohol at the party.[v]
  • 12% of youth maintained that they drank alcohol at the party or they would have drunk if they had attended a party. [vi]
  • Adolescents drink less and have fewer alcohol-related problems when their parents discipline them consistently and set clear expectations.[vii]

Alcohol is Associated with Risky Behavior

  • Alcohol use by teens has been linked to delinquent behaviors, including stealing, illicit drug use and problems at home and at school.[viii]
  • Underage drinking is the leading contributor of death from injuries. Annually, about 5,000 people under 21 die from alcohol-related injuries.[ix]
  • Underage drinking plays a significant role in increased sexual behavior, including unwanted, unintended and unprotected sexual activity, and sex with multiple partners.[x]
  • In a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 23% (5.6 million) of sexually active teens and young adults ages 15-24 in the United States reported having had unprotected sex because they were drinking or using drugs at the time. Twenty-four percent of teens ages 15-17 said that their alcohol and drug use led them to do more sexually than they had planned.[xi]
  • Teen girls who binge drink are 63% more likely to get pregnant while in their teen years.[xii]
  • An estimated 7.2% of 16 or 17 year olds and 16.7% of 18 to 20 year olds reported driving under the influence of alcohol in the past year. [xiii]

The Consequences of Underage Drinking are Real and Tragic

  • Six or more youth under 21 die each day of non-driving alcohol-related causes, such as homicide, suicide and drowning.[xiv]
  • Youth who drink alcohol are more likely to experience physical problems including hangovers, illness and alcohol poisoning, memory problems, disruption of normal growth and sexual development, among others negative effects. [xv]
  • Among young people, binge drinkers and heavy drinkers are more than twice as likely as non-drinkers to report having attempted to injure themselves or having contemplated or attempted to commit suicide.[xvi]
  • Youth who begin drinking before age 15 are five times more likely to develop alcohol dependence or abuse alcohol later in life, than those who begin drinking at or after age 21.[xvii]
  • When drinking is delayed until age 21, a child’s risk of serious alcohol problems is decreased by 70 percent.[xviii]
  • Studies reveal that alcohol consumption by adolescents results in brain damage - possibly permanent -and impairs intellectual development. [xix]
  • Studies suggest that alcohol use prior to age 21 impairs crucial aspects of youthful brain functioning. In one recent study, heavy-drinking adolescents who had been sober for three weeks still scored 10 percent lower than non-drinking peers on tests requiring verbal and nonverbal recall and skills needed for map reading, geometry, and science.[xx]
  • A study that followed over 6,500 individuals found that, by the age of 23, those who were drinkers by seventh grade were:
  • more likely than non-drinkers to have "missed work for no good reason,"
  • more likely to be substance-users,
  • more likely to engage in criminal and violent behavior, and
  • between 1.7 and 2.3 times more likely to be weekly or binge drinkers, exhibit signs of alcohol dependence, and experience multiple alcohol problems.[xxi]

Alcohol’s Impact on Athletic Performance

  • Studies conducted by the American Athletic Institute have found the following effects of alcohol on student athletes:[xxii]
  • Residual effect of alcohol from elite athlete lab test shows effect on Heart Rate, Lactic Acid / Muscle Performance and Respiratory/ Ventilation levels
  • Muscle protein synthesis (repair of muscle fiber) is diminished, predominately in your fast twitch muscle fibers
  • B vitamin deficiency resulting from diuretic effect of alcohol and subsequent dehydration affects recovery and conversion of hormone precursors into androgenic training hormones
  • Athletes that drink are twice as likely to become injured
  • The associated residual effect of the alcoholic hangover has been shown to reduce athletic performance by 11.4%
  • Training hormones are diminished for up to 96 hours following alcohol consumption (4 days)
  • Drinking to intoxication can negate as much as fourteen days of training effect

[i]Parents Who Host, Lose The Most: Don’t be a party to teenage drinking Evaluation Report, January 2008

[ii]Parents Who Host, Lose The Most: Don’t be a party to teenage drinking Evaluation Report, January 2006

[iii]2009 National Survey on Drug Use & Health

[iv]Parents Who Host, Lose The Most: Don’t be a party to teenage drinking Evaluation Report, January 2008

[v]Parents Who Host, Lose The Most: Don’t be a party to teenage drinking Evaluation Report, January 2008

[vi]Parents Who Host, Lose The Most: Don’t be a party to teenage drinking Evaluation Report, January 2008

[vii]Exploring the effects of age of alcohol use initiation and psychosocial risk factors on subsequent alcohol misuse. Journal of Studies on Alcohol. 58(3), 1997

[viii]The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, 2007

[ix]The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, 2007

[x]The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, 2007

[xi]The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, "Millions of Young People Mix Sex with Alcohol or Drugs - With Dangerous Consequences," 6 February 2002

[xii]The effects of minimum legal drinking ages on teen childbearing. The Journal of Human Resources, 36(4), 2001.

[xiii]National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2008

[xiv]Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) data, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Alcohol-Attributable Deaths Report”, US 2001.

[xv]National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2008

[xvi]J.C. Greenblatt, Patterns of Alcohol Use Among Adolescents and Associations with Emotional and Behavioral Problems (Rockville: Office of Applied Studies, SAMHSA, 2002).

[xvii]National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2008

[xviii]Calculated from information contained in: Grant BF, Dawson DA. 1997, Age at onset of alcohol use and its association with DSM-IV alcohol abuse and dependence. Results from the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey. Journal of Substance Abuse 9:103-110.

[xix]Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (Volume 24, Number 2 National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, February 2000

[xx]See, e.g., Bernice Wuethrich, "Getting Stupid," Discover 22 no. 3 (March 2001); S.A. Brown, S.F. Tapert, E. Granholm, D.C. Delis, "Neurocognitive Functioning of Adolescents: Effects of Protracted Alcohol Use," Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 24, no. 2 (Feb 2000): 164-171

[xxi]P.L. Ellickson, J.S. Tucker, D.J. Klein, "Ten-Year Prospective Study of Public Health Problems Associated With Early Drinking," Pediatrics 111, no. 5 (May 2003): 949-955.

[xxii]The American Athletic Institute, . Date accessed January 12, 2012.