Binge Drinking

- Smoking marijuana is becoming even more popular among U.S. teens and they have cut down on smoking cigarettes, binge drinking and using methamphetamine, according to a federal survey released Monday. More teens also are getting high on prescription pain pills and attention-deficit drugs, according to eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders surveyed by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The increase of teens smoking pot is partly because of the national debate over medical use of marijuana, researchers said.

Teens near liquor stores have more drinking issues The closer teens live to where alcohol is sold, the greater the seeming risk of binge drinking and driving under the influence. Researchers from the Pardee Rand Graduate School in Santa Monica, Calif., researched the relationship between proximity to alcohol retailers in zones around homes in California and drinking in children ages 12 to 17. They found an association among homes within walking distance (about half a mile) of places selling alcohol and evidence of binge drinking and driving after drinking.

Lowering drinking age bad for public health The Baltimore Sun has it right, and I had it wrong. The Baltimore Sun editorialized on Wednesday that "the legal drinking age of 21 should remain" ("Binge drinking challenge," Aug. 20). As a legislator in the 1970s and 1980s, I supported the drinking age of 18. In the 1970s, the argument persuading legislators to lower the drinking age to 18 was the slaughter in Vietnam. Children were being drafted to fight for their country. How could you tell them they are old enough to die but not old enough to drink?

A number of respected academic leaders in Maryland believe the legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18, to help confront what they describe as a hidden crisis in binge drinking among students. But they offer no convincing evidence that lowering the drinking age would reduce excessive alcohol use by college students. What we do know is that since 1984, when Congress effectively raised the national drinking age to 21, the number of young drivers charged with drunken driving has declined significantly, as has the number of alcohol-related highway deaths.

Health, safety and transportation advocates denounced yesterday a proposal by more than 100 university administrators to reconsider the legal drinking age of 21 - contending that any reduction would lead to thousands of additional drunken-driving deaths and other harm to the public health. A letter released by the college administrators did not specifically endorse a lowering of the drinking age, though many who signed it said they thought it should be reduced to age 18. Opponents nationwide as well as in Maryland unleashed a barrage of e-mails and news releases scoffing at the notion that the current drinking age is "not working" and needs to be re-examined.

The Naval Academy has recently seen what a high-ranking midshipman called an "unacceptable" increase in alcohol rules infractions, despite the launch last fall of a strict policy that put the school at the forefront of efforts at colleges nationwide to curb binge drinking. In a memo sent yesterday to all 4,400 midshipmen and obtained by The Sun, senior Rachel Barton, the drug and alcohol education student officer, said that in the past six weeks, midshipmen had violated the new rules as much as they did in the previous six months.

This month, a 45-year-old Frostburg man was walking home from work when he was assaulted by a young man outside an off-campus fraternity house. Punched in the face for no apparent reason, he fell backward and his head struck the pavement, nearly killing him. More than two weeks later, Steven A. Buckalew is still a patient in a local hospital - and in stable condition as of late yesterday. Police have filed assault charges against a 20-year-old Frostburg State University student who investigators believe had been drinking at a fraternity house party that night.

In recounting her battles with alcohol, author Koren Zailckas doesn't skimp on the details - her first drink at the age of 14, the years of blackouts and hangovers, waking up in a strange man's apartment and, finally, her embrace of sobriety at the ripe old age of 22. Her story is notable because she crafted it into a best-selling book, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, not because it's rare. Recent surveys suggest that today's girls and college-age women are abusing alcohol in ways not seen in previous generations - by binge drinking more often and at earlier ages.

Sneakers and jeans, vodka, electronics and models, beer, car and movie reviews, cognac, tobacco, rum, more models, more vodka ... cover article. This is the order of things in a number of popular magazines that carry the latest buzz-worthy items designed to appeal to young people. It should come as no surprise that alcohol is high on the list, as the combination of sound marketing research and seemingly innocuous advertising has maintained alcohol as a staple in our social diets. Underage drinking is not just a problem for young people, parents, law enforcement and proponents of sound public health practices.