If you are looking at this blog for the first time, let me fill you in. I had been visiting a high school class when one of the students asked what should a person do if his or her friend was using drugs or alcohol. A lively discussion followed and was posted on August 5th. On August 8th, one of the classmates, “Beth” gave her gripping, personal story of her road to alcoholism and her recovery. Today I want to talk a little about teen alcoholism in general. Please excuse the statistics, they are important to understand the magnitude of the problem.
Beth story continues in a non-personal way.
I’ve thought about what Beth said hundreds of times since that day, and have related the story to many teens. This lesson is one we should all learn because alcohol is no small problem for our school kids and their parents. And even though Beth’s problem was alcohol, the same could be said about drugs.
In 2006, alcohol problems alone cost our nation more than $224 billion. As of this writing, “Alcohol related problems cost every man, woman, and child in the United States $746.00 each year.” With a 2012 population of 314,159,000, that equates to more than $234 billion annually. Alcohol is involved in nearly half the deaths attributed to car accidents, suicides, and homicides—the number one, two, and three causes of death in teenagers. As for drugs, according to recent estimates, the total financial cost of drug use disorders to the United States is estimated to be $193 billion annually. That’s not counting the immeasurable toll on the user’s health and general well-being.
Parents significantly underestimate how much alcohol their teens drink. It is estimated that 20 percent of the alcohol consumed in the United States is drunk by minors. A study of 12,352 teenagers in Miami found that 20 percent of them began drinking before the age of 13! Too frequently we adults think drinking is only a problem for teenage boys, that girls are somehow resistant to the lure of alcohol. Yet an estimated 4.5 million 12- to 17-year-old girls reported consuming alcohol during the past year. (According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 39 percent of ninth-grade girls in 2005 reported drinking in the past month.)
An article in Girls’ Life Magazine (GL) indicates that “for the first time in history, teen girls drink more than boys. Almost 40 percent of ninth-grade girls have had a drink in the past month versus only 34 percent of boys. And a whopping 45 percent of high school girls drink alcohol.”
However, the 2007 National Survey of Drug Use and Health showed that, “[A]mong youths aged 12 to 17, the percentage of males who were current drinkers [had had at least one alcoholic beverage in the past month] (14.2 percent) was similar to the rate for females (15.0 percent).”
The Century Council, a national not-for-profit organization funded by distillers dedicated to fighting drunk driving and underage drinking, commissioned a program called Teenage Research Unlimited and fielded a study of teenage drinking in 2005. The study revealed that although 30 percent of 16- to 18-year-old girls say they drink with friends, only 9 percent of their mothers think their daughters are drinking.
Although adult males are more likely than their female peers to report past-month alcohol use, among 12- to 17-year-olds, the reported rate of past month alcohol use was almost equal with females (17 per-cent for males compared with 18 percent for females).
That’s enough stats to make the point. Think about your family and your kids’ schools. Ask your teen or pre-teen to read this post. Then ask them what the alcohol and drug scene is at their school. Then ask if they know any kids who drink. Do not ask for names, and at this point don’t ask if our kids drink. There will b plenty of time for that later. Asking them, may make them think you are accusing them of drinking and put them on the defensive.
Our next post will give parents some options for keeping their kids from drinking alcohol. For references to the above studies please see Tools for Effective Parenting , pages 132-3.
With statistics like these, parents may feel like throwing in the towel, but there is much a parent can do. Read about it in the next post!