The High Cost Of Teen Drinking

The numbers issued by the National Academy of Sciences last week were sobering: 20% of eighth-graders and half of high school seniors surveyed last year said they had had a drink in the past month. Nearly 30% of the seniors admitted to having had at least five drinks at a time within the previous two weeks. Drunken behavior and violent crimes that result from adolescent drinking cost the U.S. $53 billion a year, according to the report, including $19 billion from traffic accidents alone. And although alcohol use among teenagers is far more widespread than illegal-drug use at any age, the U.S. government spends 25 times as much on campaigns to fight drugs as it does to keep kids from drinking. The academy called for such measures as cracking down on merchants who sell booze to kids, reining in glamorous depictions of drinking in movies and music, and increasing excise taxes on liquor.