Alcohol Abuse Imperils Youths
by DID you know that about fourteen of every one hundred male high school seniors in the United States get drunk once a week? Approximately 23 percent of all high school students drink to intoxication at least four times a year. This is what is indicated by the Second Special Report on “Alcohol and Health,” recently submitted to Congress by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
The Institute’s director, Dr. Morris E. Chafetz, has reported that young persons are turning to alcohol with “near universal use” and a “high rate of misuse and abuse.” According to Don Phelps, the Institute’s director of prevention, 50 percent of the 18- to 21-year-olds surveyed admitted using alcohol in connection with automobiles. And he stated, “More and more are turning on to drugs and alcohol at the same time. . . . Then they overdose on two types of drugs instead of one.”
Alcohol abuse has been called the ‘Number one drug problem’ in the United States. It also imperils youths in other lands. France long has had a serious problem of alcoholism among children.
When youngsters who have been drinking alcoholic beverages get in the driver’s seat, dangers increase measurably. For instance, a sociologist found that in London, Ontario, Canada, auto crashes involving eighteen- and nineteen-year-old males who had been using alcohol more than tripled after the legal drinking age was lowered to eighteen in 1971.
Many of England’s teen-agers are making the switch from narcotics to alcohol. Why? Because they cannot pay the extremely high prices that drug pushers demand. Marcus Grant, director of London’s Alcohol Education Centre, says: “By the time they are 18 and are legally able to enter a British pub, many are on their way to becoming full-fledged alcoholics.”
Do not think, however, that alcohol abuse among young persons imperils only teen-agers. Far from it! Severe alcoholism has been found in children nine to twelve years old. Take the example of one girl now nineteen years of age. She began drinking at eleven. “I drank on the way to school and kept it [liquor] in a baby bottle so I could sip it all day long,” she admits. In the United States there are an estimated 450,000 teen-age and child alcoholics.
In a school cafeteria, students may add a dash of Scotch or gin to their milk. Some youngsters skip school sessions to drink stolen alcoholic beverages, or those that older persons buy for them. Other students drink during recess, at sports events and during afterschool parties. Concerning a party held by a group of college students at the end of the semester, one adviser declared: “I never saw anything like this year. They were drinking like there was no tomorrow.”
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