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Binge drinking a big problem for college students |
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| By
Jake
Lyro Pulse Staff Reporter The holidays can bring celebration, but they can also bring grief. Along with the festivities comes binge drinking, a problem that is rising on every university and college campus in the nation. Alcohol has been around since ancient times, whether it was wine for the Greeks or beer from the monks. Drinking is part of many traditions. One "tradition" that is being carried on |
Cartoon by
Rudy Talamantez |
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around college campuses is binge drinking. Fatal car crashes are the number one killer of youths from the age of 18 through 25. Texas leads the nation for DWI arrests and deaths, and San Antonio leads Texas in DWI deaths, according to Pat Walker, Administrative Assistant for the Greater Alamo Area Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD). Fifteen to 20 year olds made up the highest percentage of arrests for those with blood alcohol levels in the .00 to .09 range. DWI is considered .08 or higher. In 1999, 574 people were killed in automobile
accidents in Texas, and 260 of those deaths were alcohol related, said
Walker. Binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a row for males and four in a row for females at least once in a two-week period. One drink is defined as a 1.25-ounce shot of liquor, a 12-ounce beer or wine cooler, or 4-ounces of wine. The reason for the discrepancy is that since males have a larger build, women are affected at a lower dosage. College students spend approximately $5.5
billion annually to purchase over 430 million gallons of alcoholic beverages,
including more than 4 billion cans of beer. That figure is more than students
spend on soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, coffee or school books combined. "Binge drinking produces a number of problems for the binge drinker: educational, interpersonal, health-related and legal. It also produces second-hand effects on campus for the non-bingers, such as assaults, unwanted sexual advances, disturbances of sleep and vandalism," said Henry Wechsler, Ph.D., principal investigator and director of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study in Boston. Alcohol was involved in 95 percent of violent crimes on campuses, and 40 percent of academic problems are alcohol-related. The more frequent the binger drinker, the more alcohol-related problems they will have. MADD says that alcohol is the number one drug problem among young people. Research shows that youth who drink alcohol are 7.5 times more likely to use an illicit drug and 50 times more likely to use cocaine than peers who never drink. "Binge drinking impedes the quality of education and puts people at risk and too often establishes a lifetime pattern of abuse and addiction," said Edward Malloy, president of the University of Notre Dame. Grades and alcohol seem to be inversely related -- the more alcohol consumed, the lower the grades. Alcohol is implicated in more than 40 percent of all academic problems and 28 percent of all dropouts. The CAS results also point out that college students who reported a D or F grade point average drank an average of 10 alcoholic drinks per week while students earning mostly A’s sipped slightly more than three drinks per week. One consequence of binge drinking is possible death. Consuming four or five drinks in one hour causes the blood-alcohol level to rise above the .08 intoxication level for most average-size males/females. At that level of intoxication, driving ability diminishes. Young drivers make up 6.7 percent of the total driving population, but constitute 13 percent of the alcohol-involved drivers in fatal accidents. On any given weekend, an average of one teenager dies an hour in a car crash, and nearly 50 percent of those crashes involve alcohol. "Over the past few years, there have been some very public deaths among students due to binge drinking, and this has brought attention to binge drinking, which has been a problem at colleges and universities for a very long time," said Mark Goldman, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of South Florida and co-chairman of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). There are many reasons for binge drinking. They range from celebration, "drowning the blues," parties, functions and because alcohol is cheap, plentiful and easy to get. Students find ways to binge drink for less than five dollars. "Binge drinking is an extensive problem on American college campuses, and for the first time, great attention is being paid to the problem and many colleges are trying to do what they can to decrease the harm that it produces," said Wechsler. College presidents, researchers, MADD, SADD and students are joining forces to attack binge drinking and its problems. Student alcohol awareness classes are being taught across the nation. Eighty percent of schools are targeting the
major participants of binge drinking, and they are offering special educational
programs. Other suggested solutions for binge drinking include banning advertisers from targeting college students, increasing the cost of alcohol, making alcohol less accessible to students by forbidding the sale of alcohol around campuses, enforcing stricter fines for false identification and contributing to minors and developing peer counseling programs. Beer is already banned on 25 percent of all college campuses, and 33 percent do not allow distilled spirits. Binge drinking is a serious problem for college students. Because of the problems caused by binge drinking, learning about its effects can help combat the problem.
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