TUESDAY, Feb. 25, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- More than half of all alcohol in the United States is consumed by underage drinkers and by adults who are "excessive drinkers."
These two groups are also responsible for almost half of consumer spending on alcohol, a new study contends.
The findings appear in the Feb. 26 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Meanwhile, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) calls the report "another attempt to manipulate data to get sensational headlines."
Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), the organization that conducted the study, was faulted last year for not using appropriate statistical techniques when concluding that underage drinkers consumed one quarter of the nation's alcohol. CASA later admitted its methodology was flawed.
The authors of the new CASA study analyzed information based on surveys that covered 217,192 persons aged 12 and older from three different data sets, including the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse and the 2000 U.S. Census.
Based on this data, half of 12- to 20-year-olds and 52 percent of adults 21 and over were estimated to drink alcohol. A total of 4.21 billion drinks were consumed each month, with underage drinkers downing 19.7 percent of the total. Adult excessive drinking -- defined as more than two drinks a day -- accounted for 30.4 percent of the total, the study says.
In 1999, consumers spent $116.2 billion on alcohol. Underage drinkers accounted for $22.5 billion of the total and adult excessive drinkers $34.4 billion. Combined, the two groups accounted for 50.1 percent of all the alcohol consumed that year and 48.9 percent of dollars spent on alcohol, according to the study.
The study authors go on to state that if all underage drinking were eliminated and everyone else limited their consumption to two drinks a day, spending on alcohol would shrink by 48.9 percent, or $56.9 billion.
And these estimates are conservative, the authors say.
Not so, DISCUS counters.
CASA's methodology for the new study is still flawed, the group says. "Fifty percent of all 12-20 years olds would have to consume 100 drinks per month, which is simply absurd," DISCUS President and Chief Executive Officer Peter H. Cressy says in a statement.
What's more, adds DISCUS spokeswoman Lisa Hawkins, CASA "took it upon themselves to define excessive drinking." While the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommend no more than one drink a day for most women and two drinks a day for most men, they [the agencies] do not define "excessive," Hawkins says.
"There's a real danger in doing this because they [CASA] are basically adding to the problem" of underage drinking, Hawkins says. "They're inflating it to such an unrealistic level that kids are going to think their friends are drinking more than they are."
Responds Susan E. Foster, study author and vice president and director of policy research and analysis at CASA: "CASA's only interest is in the truth. The fact that we made a mistake last year only means we have a greater interest in the truth. We've subjected our analysis to extensive external review, including the federal agencies involved and the most prestigious peer-reviewed journal."
There's no denying that underage drinking and excessive drinking are serious problems and, for CASA, the new statistics are a call to arms.
"We have a very big public health problem on our hands, and if 49 percent of sales are at stake we can't rely on industry to curb consumption," Foster says. "We need an aggressive public health campaign like those that have been mounted against smoking and illegal drug use."
Equally disturbing, Foster adds, kids are starting to drink younger, at an average age of 14 (among those who start between 12 and 20 years old). The younger you are when you start drinking, the more problematic the habit can become, she says.
"There's other research that shows that kids who start drinking before 21 years are twice as likely to develop alcohol problems than if they had waited," Foster says. "Kids who start drinking before 15 are four times likelier to become alcoholics."
Youngsters who drink beer, wine or spirits are also more likely to smoke and use illicit drugs, says an accompanying editorial written by Drs. Glen Hanson and Ting-Kai Li, both with the National Institutes of Health. And 12- to 17-year-olds who are heavy drinkers are up to 11 times more likely to use illicit drugs than nondrinkers, they say.
It's a concern others share.
"We need to recognize that alcohol use and abuse among children is the true gateway drug," says Michael Nuccitelli, executive director of SLS Health, a residential and outpatient behavioral health-care facility in Brewster, N.Y.
Nuccitelli says 80 percent of all drug-abuse patients in his facility, past and present, started with alcohol.
Parents need to get involved in the fight against underage drinking, Foster says. She also suggests increasing taxes on beer, wine and spirits and placing restrictions on advertising and marketing.
"We feel that there needs to be enormous restraint exercised in advertising and marketing high in youth appeal," Foster says. "Kids are being bombarded by messages in all forms of the media that seem to glamorize alcohol use and make it appear without consequence. One of the bottom lines here is that the alcohol industry's gain is our children's loss and parents need to think about that."
More information
To see federal guidelines on alcohol, read Does Alcohol Have a Place in a Healthy Diet?. For more on underage drinking, visit the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
