Underage drinking can be considered as one of the major health problems of US. Binge drinking, or heavy episodic drinking, can be observed to kids as young as eight graders, according to the data gathered by Monitoring the Future in 2006. The statistics associated to underage drinking is very alarming and sadly enough, the move to solve the problem is rather slow and inefficient. The alcohol market industry is currently enjoying billions of profits in the annual sales generated from retailers, distributors, and of course, producers (Yoast, et al 4).
Out of these three, the producers are the most powerful force in the alcohol industry, for they dictate the practices of both the retailers and the distributors from the marketing programs they implement. On the other hand, it is the retailers that generally face all conflicts and regulations associated with alcohol sale and distribution, as they have to answer to state laws and are usually held accountable by communities and the consumers itself (Yoast, et al 4). Alcohol-related businesses undoubtedly deem the young people as one of their most vital customers.
Teenagers aged 16 to 19 years old play a very critical part in the alcohol industry, as these are the ages wherein binge drinking is quite common – and these alcohol-related businesses earn as much as 76% of their revenues from people who drinks 5 or more drinks in a day. But due to the rising concern of parents, schools, health institutions and the society in general to underage drinking, the government had passed a law to regulate the tendencies of minor, especially college students below 21 years old, to drink hazardously.
A minimum legal age for drinking is set at 21 years old and a proposal is on the works to set a minimum entry age for bars and similar places where alcoholic beverages are served. This move had created a big impact in the expected earnings of small businesses that primarily retails alcoholic beverages to individual customers. Underage Drinking Statistics Youth binge drinking is currently at an average of five drinks at a given time and they do so once every two weeks.
On a recent national survey conducted by the SAMHSA”s National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, there was an outstanding 7. 2 million teenagers aged 12 to 17 years old drank at least once during the past year and 13% of them had suffered from serious problems related to excessive drinking. Children, at their very young age, know the negative effects of drinking but 56% of them admitted to become encouraged to drink because of effective advertising (SAMHSA 5). Advertising works for them as much as peer pressure.
And on the average, young adults who started drinking at the age of 13 bring their habit with them through college and their entire adulthood. In 1998 alone, there were an estimated number of 10. 4 million underage drinkers and almost half of them have admitted they are binge drinkers while around 2. 3 million are certified heavy drinkers (SAMHSA 5) Figure 1 shows the percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th Grade Students that have admitted to consuming more than 5 bottles of alcoholic beverage in a row within the last two weeks.
This is based on a survey conducted by MTF, which started in 1975 and continued up until 2005. Each year, MTF surveys different schools and for their 2005 data, they have a sample size of 17,026 8th graders coming from 151 schools across United States. They also questioned a total of 16,620 10th graders from 123 schools and 14,814 12th grades from 136 schools, bringing the total to almost 50,000 students coming from more than 400 public schools in the US (Johnston et al 3).