<p>Louie: Interesting post. Can you substantiate your statement, "The alcohol-related hospitalization statistics have exploded this year." Thank you.</p>
<p>Binge drinking was the only way to drink when I was in college.....not just at mine, but at the other colleges we visited as well. Add drugs and you've got the 70s. Why do parents act as if all of this is so new?</p>
<p>They should lower the drinking age to 19 like Canada does. Not 18 because then HS students could get it, but 19 is a good number.</p>
<p><<lucifer -="" i'm="" not="" sure="" your="" statement="" about="" having="" "essentially="" no="" alcohol="" in="" his="" blood="" at="" the="" end="" of="" night"="" is="" correct.="" i="" believe="" several="" hours="" later="" that="" drinker="" would="" still="" be="" violation="" zero="" tolerance="" levels="" teenage="" drivers="" are="" held="" to,="" and="" even="" if="" were="" below="" .08="" limit,="" he="" may="" impaired="" should="" aware="" that.="" i've="" seen="" a="" chart="" shows="" how="" long="" stays="" body="" as="" function="" amount="" consumed="" weight="" (and="" gender,="" too,="" think),="" but="" can't="" locate="" it="" this="" morning.="" course,="" value="" limited="" you="" accurately="" report="" much="" drank.="">></lucifer></p>
<p>I said 180 pound male because that is an "average" male, which is what most BAC charts are based on. While there is significant variablity between charts (and can be between people, too). Anyways, I didn't say anyone could drive and pass "zero tolerence" - I'd be worried about passing zero tolerence SOBER (as in middle of the week, haven't had a drink for days) because of machine/operator error. I said he would have essentially no alcohol in his blood (~.01-.00 certainly won't have any effect on any normal person). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.health.org/nongovpubs/bac-chart/%5B/url%5D">http://www.health.org/nongovpubs/bac-chart/</a>
6 beers over 6 hours, subtract 1 drink per hour and you get 0 drinks. And before anyone challenges me and says that is calibrated for an "average" person, READ ABOVE - I said that it would be true for only an average person.</p>
<p>Anyways, my point was that most people can "binge" and never be anywhere near impaired enough to do anything stupid - you can "binge" and still be legally able to drive very easily. In fact, that same 180 pound male could "double binge" and have 10 beers over the night, extend the nigth by an hour or so, and be LEGALLY ABLE TO DRIVE (even by the questionable .08 standard), must less be able to function like a normal human being.</p>
<p>And to everyone saying how laws regulating alcohol are "good" because they save lives: I guarantee you that by banning unhealthy food (i.e. McDonald's) you could save FAR, far more lives than you could ever hope to from drunk driving, save more money (by eliminating chronic and debilitating illnesses that obseity causes), and in general get better things to happen. Alcohol, as usual, is being unfairly singled out. Consider that driving sleep deprived is every bit as dangerous, if not more so, than driving drunk, that driving with a cell phone is as dangerous as driving drunk, and that one of the major causes of accidents is people changing CDs / using their stereos. Yet no Congressman would dare tell an average adult not to use cell phones at all (though they don't seem to mind telling 16 year olds who can't (and probably wouldn't) vote not to), no one would ever propose legally restricting unhealthy foods, and there is barely a whimper about the dangers of sleep deprived driving, which is increasingly an issue given the nation's huge sleep debt epidemic (which starts, for many, in high school, continues through college, and just never stops). To conclude this long, rambling paragraph: all of those who claim to support laws that save lives (at the expense of freedoms (i.e. the freedom to put what you want into your body (this does not include the freedom to do whatever you want after doing so), etc..)) do not carry your ideas to their logical conclusion, nor do you apply them consistently. There are plenty of things that are far worse for society than alcohol, that kill more people, and that pose a serious threat to our nation (again, obesity is an EXCELLENT example) that none of you would dare regulate because it isn't a "vice" and it isn't a "drug". People have (or ought to have) every bit as much right to put alcohol into their bodies as they do unhealthy foods or whatever else they want to.</p>
<p>In this whole conversation, perhaps the thing that surprises me the most is the "kids will be kids" and "it was OK for us, it must be OK for my kid" attitude of a couple of people on here. Wow. I mean, I know that attitude exists out there, I just don't often run into it among my peers, so it surprises me when I do.</p>
<p>Weenie-</p>
<p>This year I conducted informal surveys of freshmen, resident advisers, and administrators as research for an article. At one prestigious university, there were 17 hospitalizations in the first week alone where there had only been 8 in the entire previous year. Some individual anecdotes are curling my hair, I tell you! One good source of information can be the campus newspapers themselves. Even when a college prefers to keep these things under the radar for potential student recruits and their parents, the student journalists are telling it like it is. I was shocked to see how severe it has become; many of the kids involved were not big-time "party hearty" types prior to arriving on campus, although of course there were plenty of those. I believe, as Seaman posits in his book, that the culprit is the dangerous habit of "front-loading" or "pre-gaming," downing enough alcohol before going out to campus activities in the hope that the buzz will last all night. (We are not talking five or six, but rather 10-12 in many cases -- they haven't even started to feel the effects of the first two before they're pouring in the others) When the remaining ambulatory kids happen upon another drinking opportunity later in the evening, they start bending elbows again, thinking, "Gee, I haven't had anything to drink in a good long while!" So far I have found that the gender ratio is nearly 50/50, which is a new development as well. Previously, there were far more boys drinking to dangerous levels. The first month's date rape statistics were also much higher than expected.</p>
<p>I never expected to sound (and feel) like such an old grouch when I am still so mindful of my own college indiscretions, but so it goes...</p>
<p>I ran across this article while looking for something else today. It's from the Michigan Daily. <a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/29/42493ef099b01%5B/url%5D">http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/29/42493ef099b01</a></p>
<p>Louie- If the jump was from 8 for a year to 17 in one week, perhaps the situation has to do with this particular crop of students from this year, and not an overarching trend?</p>
<p>"And to everyone saying how laws regulating alcohol are "good" because they save lives: I guarantee you that by banning unhealthy food (i.e. McDonald's) you could save FAR, far more lives than you could ever hope to from drunk driving, save more money (by eliminating chronic and debilitating illnesses that obseity causes), and in general get better things to happen. Alcohol, as usual, is being unfairly singled out. Consider that driving sleep deprived is every bit as dangerous, if not more so, than driving drunk, that driving with a cell phone is as dangerous as driving drunk, and that one of the major causes of accidents is people changing CDs / using their stereos."</p>
<p>Believe it or not, the CDC has data on ALL of those issues. I know you meant those as rhetorical examples, but hazard analysis has been conducted on each of them, both in terms of morbidity and mortality. You happen to be wrong in every case. The difference between McDonald's and drunk driving is that, in the latter case, 2/3rds of the victims are not the drivers themselves. </p>
<p>"There are plenty of things that are far worse for society than alcohol, that kill more people."</p>
<p>Good argument. Wrong again. Single greatest induced cause of morbidity and mortality, single greatest cause of "years of productive lives lost", single largest cause of death for ALL causes for those under age 30, single largest cause of death for all ingested substances (it actually isn't even close); and single largest cause of death based on external causes - all the same - alcohol. </p>
<p>I am no teetotaler. Rhetoric is fine. But it's usually helpful to get your facts straight.</p>
<p>Let's play ball.</p>
<p>There aren't statistics on actual deaths caused by drunk driving. The term used is "alcohol related accidents." That is a vague term that includes tons of accidents not really caused by alcohol (i.e. Drunk person is in the car being driven home by a DD, DD runs someone over, accident is alcohol related). Anyways, I hope you have sources. I do.</p>
<p>Thus, taking CONSERVATIVE estimates on obseity-related deaths, 112,000 people died from deaths attributable to obesity in 2000. Contrarily, taking the numbers from the about.com source I linked on alcohol related deaths, ~110,000 people died from alcohol each year for the past 20 or so years, including car crashes, liver disesase, etc...</p>
<p>Now, going by what the CDC says in my linked article, 75,000 people per year die from alcohol. That is less than 112,000 pretty clearly.</p>
<p>If you want to talk strictly about the CDC, you are STILL wrong about alcohol:
<a href="http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hpolicy_recent_rep.cfm?dr_DateTime=12-03-04&show=yes#27060%5B/url%5D">http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hpolicy_recent_rep.cfm?dr_DateTime=12-03-04&show=yes#27060</a></p>
<p>Let me quote it for you:
New unpublished research conducted by researchers at CDC and the National Cancer Institute likely will conclude that the number of annual obesity-related deaths in the United States "pales in comparison" to the 435,000 annual tobacco-related deaths and "undercut[s] claims of a recent surge" in obesity-related deaths. According to the new research, annual obesity-related deaths likely are comparable to the 85,000 annual deaths from alcohol consumption or the 75,000 from infections (McKay, Wall Street Journal, 12/3). An internal CDC investigation last week determined an agency study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March that said obesity could overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in the near future inflated the number of annual obesity-related deaths by tens of thousands because of statistical errors. The study led to an HHS advertising campaign on obesity and an increased focus on obesity research at NIH, which increased funding for such research from $378.6 million in 2003 to $400.1 million in 2004 (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 11/23). Authors of the new research declined to discuss their specific result because they were not approved by NCI or accepted for publication by a scientific journal. But the authors criticized the methodology of the disputed CDC study, which they said relied on data from young and otherwise healthy obese individuals, although most deaths occur in older individuals with other risk factors, such as tobacco use or other health problems. They said that the data used in the new research, which is based on an analysis of death certificates from three federal surveys through 2000, is more current and accounts for other risk factors. Barry Graubard, one of authors of the new research and a statistician at NCI, said, "This is nationally representative data" (Wall Street Journal, 12/3).</p>
<p>Thus, alcohol is not the monster you would like to portray it as. Obesity is comprable, even in the most conservative of studies (some studies attribute as many as 414,000 deaths per year to obesity; further, incidence of obesity is climbing rather quickly).</p>
<p>Tobacco kills more people than alcohol, too; I don't know if you consider that ingested, though. The CDC says that obesity is very comprable to alcohol (and that is using conservative estimates), and that it PALES in comparison to tobacco as a cause of death.</p>
<p>It's usually helpful to get YOUR facts straight.</p>
<p>How many foods go into the causes of obesity? I bet you will be able to find a couple of deaths a year caused by choking on a Big Mac, but...</p>
<p>Compare secondhand tobacco deaths to "secondhand" alcohol-related ones? Try the same for morbidity. Now, name one secondhand death from obesity. I'm sure there are a couple: 600 lb. guy fell off the balcony and crushed the passersby. You will find them on the pages of the National Enquirer if you look hard enough. </p>
<p>But I don't see ANYONE around here advocating a ban on alcohol, so I'm not quite sure what your point is.</p>
<p>When I went to college heavy drinking was the norm. In fact, except for the occasional football game, it was the main form of relaxation and entertainment. It probably did not help that I went to a State U that was known to be a party school. After a couple of years, I transferred - for other reasons - to a nerdy school. The administration was worried that the school was too nerdy and the kids were not social. They helped to solve this problem by rolling in kegs of free beer. By the time I graduated, I had developed a pattern of alcohol abuse that became worse over the years. It was many years before I was able to recognize and deal with the problem.</p>
<p>Last year when my D was a senior in HS, her 3 close friends began drinking. Their parents expected and accepted this behavior. One kid was grounded for a short time when the cops arrested her for drinking in a parked car. Otherwise the only concern expressed by the parents was to be careful about drinking and driving. </p>
<p>My D is very much against alcohol use of any kind. She also cannot afford to be a drinker because of a serious health issue. There was no way to make alcohol use a part of the college selection process. We assumed drug and alcohol abuse would be everywhere. Fortunately, she got lucky. The school she is attending does not allow smoking in any building and even in some outdoor locations. Alcohol use - on or off campus - is not tolerated. Any kid coming back from a party drunk will be confronted the next day.</p>
<p>As part of a new policy, UW-Madison administrators have placed 22 phone calls so far this semester to the parents of students who have been so intoxicated that it has been life threatening. All but one of these students was sent to detoxification because of their drinking. Eighty to eighty-five percent are freshman; the rest are sophomores. The students are also in various kinds of classes at the University relating to their drinking.</p>
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