Reducing Underage Drinking A Collective Responsibility (2004) / Chapter Skim
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3. Consquences of Underage Drinking
3. Consquences of Underage Drinking
Pages 58-69
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From page 58... ...
. But underage drinkers need not drink heavily to be at high risk of experiencing negative consequences.
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From page 59... ...
As a result, young people who drink are more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior that can result in illness, injury, and death. Acute consequences of underage drinking include unintentional death and injury associated with driving or engaging in other risky tasks after drinking, homicide and violence, suicide attempts, sexual assault, risky sexual behavior, and vandalism and property damage.
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From page 60... ...
And 14.7 percent of whites, 13.1 percent of Latinos, and 7.7 percent of African Americans aged 15 to 20 admitted to driving a car after drinking alcohol. Alcohol-related traffic fatalities constituted almost 37 percent of all fatal youth traffic fatalities (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2002b)
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From page 61... ...
Carrying a weapon increases the dangers associated with drinking; not surprisingly, injuries due to a physical fight were more common among frequent heavy drinkers (13 percent) than for nondrinking peers (only about 2 percent)
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From page 62... ...
report that 23.4 percent of white youth, 24.1 percent of Latino youth, and 17.8 percent of African American youth reported using alcohol or other drugs at the time of their last sexual intercourse. Young people are less likely to use a condom if they have been drinking, which puts them at risk for unplanned pregnancies and contracting sexually transmitted diseases and HIV (the virus that causes AIDS)
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From page 63... ...
. Some become dependent during adolescence.2 Analyses of the 1999 Harvard School of Public Health National College Alcohol Survey of students age 19 or older, after controlling for a variety of factors, found that the earlier they had first drunk to intoxication, the more likely they were to experience alcohol dependence and frequent heavy drinking in college (Gruber et al., 1996)
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From page 64... ...
Adolescent brain developments occur in areas of the brain critical for considering the consequences of actions and important for stress responses and managing drives (Spear, 2002)
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From page 65... ...
Neuropsychological studies also suggest that alcohol use during adolescence may have a direct effect on brain functioning: negative effects included decreased ability in planning and executive functioning, memory, spatial operations, and attention -- all of which are important to academic performance and future functioning (Giancola and Mezzich, 2000; Brown et al., 2000; Tapert and Brown, 1999; Tapert et al., 2001)
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From page 66... ...
It is clear from these studies that reducing alcohol consumption among young people reduces such immediate outcomes as deaths, crime, and other consequences of impaired behavior. For example, research has shown that policies that affect alcohol availability, including excise tax rates and the minimum drinking age, have measurable effects on such outcomes as crime, highway fatalities, tobacco and drug use, and sexually transmitted diseases with greater availability associated with increases in these outcomes (Chaloupka, 2004; Chesson et al., 1997; Coate and Grossman, 1988; Cook, 1981; Cook and Moore, 1993a, 1993b; Cook and Tauchen, 1982, 1984; Kenkel, 2000; Ohsfeldt and Morrisey, 1997; Pacula, 1998; Ruhm, 1996; Saffer and Grossman, 1987; Wagenaar and Toomey, 2002)
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From page 67... ...
As we have seen, those consequences include violent death, disability, disease, reduced academic and occupational achievement, and property damage, among many others. Estimating the causal role that underage drinking plays in each of these outcomes is the very big and difficult challenge for epidemiologists.
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From page 68... ...
Should the social cost computation include subjective losses or only production losses? The presumption in our society is that the public good is the sum of individual preferences.
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From page 69... ...
The committee concludes that the PIRE estimate of $53 billion, while perhaps somewhat low, is a reasonable starting point for assessing social costs. 3The study reports separately the value of lost productivity ($11 billion)
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