Action on problem drinking in the US needed

According to a new study, teenagers account for nearly 20 per cent of the annual alcohol consumption of the United States, while excessive drinking by adults accounts for another 30 per cent. "If half of all alcohol consumption is a product of misuse and abuse, we have a real problem on our hands," said Susan E. Foster, an epidemiologist at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. It was Dr Foster who led the team of researchers whose results were recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"The implications are that the alcohol industry has an economic interest in both, and that interest is at odds with public health," she said.

The industry, needless to say, was swift to respond, claiming that the study has flaws in its methodology and the estimate of teenage drinking is nearly double the level reported by the government. An industry spokesman also questioned the study's definition of abuse as any instance of consumption beyond the level of two drinks a day.

"Illegal underage drinking and alcohol abuse in any amount is a serious problem, but [Foster] does no one any good by repeatedly playing fast and loose with the data," said Dr Peter H. Cressy, president and chief executive of the Distilled Spirits Council.

Whatever the exact figures, underage drinking "is a real problem that we need to address correctively, in the family and in the community," said Dr Ting-Kai Li, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Is this something new? No, it is not. Is it increasing? I don't know. I think it doesn't matter whether it is increasing or decreasing. It is an important problem that we must address."

Dr Foster and her colleagues released a similar report a year ago that said underage drinking accounted for 25 per cent of alcohol consumption. In an interview she admitted that the group had erred in that previous study, overestimating underage drinking because youths were overrepresented in the federal surveys it relied upon.

"We've spent the better part of a year getting it right and we are now confident of our findings," she said.

Dr Foster added that the team's new estimates were very conservative.

The surveys that supplied the data did not include high school dropouts, young people in the military, the homeless, and the institutionalized - all groups that are known to exhibit heavy alcohol consumption.

There is no doubt that drinking among teenagers is a severe problem, not only because it is illegal, but also because it can damage the brain and in the process have a detrimental effect on mental and social development.

Studies in the United sates have shown that individuals who begin drinking before the age of fifteen are four times more likely to become alcoholics as those who wait until they are adults.

Three former U.S. surgeons general -- Julius Richmond, Antonia Novello and David Satcher -- joined with the Columbia researchers in a nationwide call for concerted action on the part of the alcohol industry, parents, and the public health community.

Among other measures, they suggested an industry endowment for an independent foundation to curb underage drinking, as well as excessive drinking by adults; the inclusion of information on the dangers of underage and excessive drinking on labels, as is the case for cigarettes; and the provision of the nutritional content of products, including calories, on the labels.