Teen drinking stats being disputed
02/27/2002
By TAMAR LEWIN / New York Times News Service
After several news organizations reported a finding that underage drinkers consumed a quarter of the nation's alcohol, the widely respected anti-drinking organization that issued the finding acknowledged that it had not applied the usual statistical techniques in deriving that number, which would then have been far smaller.
Indeed, the government agency on whose data the finding was based said that by its own analysis, the figure for the proportion of alcohol consumed by teenagers is 11.4 percent.
The study, "Teen Tipplers," was issued by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, whose president, Joseph Califano Jr., was secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Jimmy Carter. The report found that 5 million high school students, or 31 percent, engaged in binge drinking – that is, consumed five or more drinks on one occasion – at least once a month.
But it was the 25 percent finding that was the headline on the news release that accompanied the 145-page report, and the one featured by CNN, The Associated Press and other news organizations.
NBC also reported the 25 percent figure but added that the liquor industry and the government contended that the real figure was more like 11 percent. On Tuesday evening, the AP and other news organizations began correcting the original figure.
"It looks like Mr. Califano and CASA have adopted Enron's accounting practices," said Phil Lynch, a spokesman for Brown-Forman Corp., whose products include Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey.
What is beyond dispute in various government studies is that teenage drinking remains a serious problem. Although alcohol consumption by teenagers dropped sharply in the 1980s, when states raised the drinking age from 18 to 21, that decline has plateaued since the mid-1990s. From the 1950s until the 1990s, more boys drank than girls, but that gender gap has all but disappeared.
"Underage drinking has reached epidemic proportions in America," Mr. Califano said.
The gender-specific drinking data come from government surveys, with teenagers reporting higher rates of drinking in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted in schools by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, than they do on the annual National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which is conducted in homes.
But both surveys show that teenage girls' drinking habits now mirror those of boys.
"The latest findings show no difference between teenage girls' drinking habits and teenage boys'," said a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the most recent school-based survey, 41 percent of the girls and 40 percent of the boys reported drinking alcohol in the last month.
And in the 2000 household survey, 16.2 percent of the boys and 16.5 percent of the girls, ages 12 to 17, reported alcohol use.
Almost half the teens ages 14 to 18 have tried the new alcopops – fruit-flavored, malt-based alcoholic beverages with names such as Hard Lemonade, Smirnoff Ice, Skyy Blue, Tequiza and Hooper's Hooch – which are particularly appealing to young people because of their sweet taste.
Indeed, teens were three times more likely to know about these drinks than adults, and among 14- to 16-year-olds, twice as many preferred such alcopops to beer or mixed drinks.
