Forty-percent of adolescents who report drinking sometime in the past month say they got their booze, free of charge, from an adult – and 20% of all teen drinkers were given alcohol by a parent, guardian or other adult living in their home, according to a new report from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
In all, reports the substance abuse treatment advocates at Join Together, that means about 650,000 kids in the past month were given alcohol by a parent or guardian. “This report provides unprecedented insight into the social context of this public health problem,” SAMHSA Administrator Terry Cline told JT. “Its findings strongly indicate that parents and other adults can play an important role in helping influence – for better or for worse – young people’s behavior with regard to underage drinking.”
And how.
The SAMSHA report, based on data accumulated from 2002-2006, shows that more than 80% of all kids, age 12 to 20, drank last at their own or someone else home – at home, teens consumed an average of 4.9 drinks at a single sitting. In 2006, there were 10.8 million youthful drinkers in America, including 7.2 million who self-identified as binge drinkers – those having more than five drinks at one sitting.
JT says the feds have identified reducing the number of underage drinkers as a goal – not that you’d ever know that by looking at the federal youth anti-drug media campaign, which spends its energy (and millions of taxpayer dollars) harping endlessly about the scourge of the evil weed, marijuana. It should be noted, of course, that researchers have yet to identify a single death (at least not in any documents I’ve ever seen) related directly to marijuana use (that is, for example, a pot overdose death), despite how nasty the feds make marijuana use out to be. Alcohol, on the other hand, is a known killer – according just to this latest report, the feds say that alcohol kills 5,000 teens each year, including nearly 2,000 deaths in drunk driving accidents.
Bottoms up!
This article appears in July 25 • 2008.