Binge Drinking and Its Consequences Up Among American College Students

Scott Krueger, a freshman student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), likely bore dreams of achieving academic glory and a long life of happiness and success. But those dreams were cut short when, in 1997, he died of alcohol poisoning with his blood-alcohol level at five times the drunken driving standards in that state. His fraternity brothers reported that he had multiple drinks within a short period of time—he was binge drinking.

However, Scott isn’t the only college student that has met their demise through industrial-strength guzzling. In 1995, 318 people ages 15 to 24 died from alcohol poisoning alone, many of them after a night binge at college. At the University of Virginia, a tradition called “Fourth-year Fifth,” which has seniors drinking a fifth of hard liquor at the final game of the football season, has killed 18 students since 1990. The long-term risks of college drinking practices are just as sobering. As many as 300,000 of today’s students will eventually die of alcohol-related causes such as drunk driving accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease, and various cancers.

But apparently the countless tragedies and alarming statistics have done nothing to curtail the habit. In fact, according to a new study from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, binge drinking among American college students is on the rise; as is its consequences. From 1999 to 2005, the percentage of students aged 18 to 24 who said they had binged on alcohol in the last month rose from 41.7 percent to nearly 45 percent; drunk driving proportions among this group increased from 26.5 percent to almost 29 percent and the number of drinking-related deaths went from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005, an increase of 3 percent. But the greatest increase was seen in death from unintentional poisoning, which nearly tripled between 1998 and 2005.

But alcohol misuse among college students doesn’t just affect the individual drinker; there are often consequences for other students, faculty members, the college and the community as a whole. Consider these statistics:

• More than 696,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking. 
• More than 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.
• 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 had unprotected sex and more than 100,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex.
• About 11 percent of college student drinkers report that they have damaged property while under the influence of alcohol.
• More than 25 percent of administrators from schools with relatively low drinking levels and over 50 percent from schools with high drinking levels say their campuses have a “moderate” or “major” problem with alcohol-related property damage.

But many experts say the problem often begins before college. Recently, a study presented at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Prevention Research in Washington, D.C. revealed that the earlier alcohol is introduced to a child, the greater the likelihood that he or she will binge drink in college. Moreover, “the greater number of drinks that a parent set as a limit for the teens, the more often they drank and got drunk  in college,” said researcher Caitlin Abar of the Prevention Research and Methodology Center at Pennsylvania State University. On the other hand, whether the parents themselves drank appeared to have little effect on predicting their child’s behaviors toward teen alcohol use.   

In 31 states, parents can legally serve alcohol to their underage children. And though U.S. teenagers drink less often than adults, they tend to drink more at a time—five drinks in a sitting, on average—according to lead researcher Ralph Hingson, director of the institute’s division of epidemiology and prevention research. “We as a society have a collective responsibility to try and change this culture of drinking at colleges and among young people,” he said.

A growing number of colleges and universities are addressing campus drinking problems by providing prevention education; expanding counseling services; and offering more alternatives, such as alcohol-free parties. Hingson said that a number of these interventions have been shown to work, but that some colleges are not implementing them. “The challenge for us is to make sure colleges understand what things are working,” he said. “We have to get them to expand screening and interventions to reach wider populations of students and work with communities.”

Hingson says efforts similar to those used to reduce smoking are needed to deal with the drinking problem among our youth. “We as a society have a collective responsibility to try and change this culture of drinking at colleges and among young people.” Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, says for that to happen, society needs to take drinking among college students more seriously and the practice needs to be discouraged by those whose opinions matter the most—friends in their own peer group. “Options for bad judgment available to a college student are determined by society, and ours is decidedly ambivalent about alcohol,” Katz said. “Drinking to excess is often given favorable treatment in the media, and in social groups.”

At the same time, all of us must encourage college students to take personal responsibility for making healthy choices with the only lives they will ever have. Drinking to excess doesn’t need to be a rite of passage and driving under the influence isn’t a requirement for graduation.