Are alcohol ads and underage drinking related? Can reducing or eliminating alcohol ads on TV reduce underage drinking? Simple solutions to complex issues are always temping. Unfortunately, news reports can mislead if they don’t accurately summarize research findings. Misleading Reporting In reporting the findings of a study1 on the subject, the New York Times failed to …
Are early puberty and early drinking age related? Researchers wanted to know the answer. To do so, they studied 1,117 young people. They found that early onset of puberty predicts early consumption of alcohol and intoxication. And it does so among both males and females. It also predicts smoking, drug use, and both sex and …
Much research focuses on early age of first drink. Researchers usually call this early onset of drinking. (They ignore age at first intoxication.) Many report that age at first drink is associated with later drinking problems. However, no one knows why this is so. There are two obvious possibilities. One is that early onset of …
Is there a connection between alcohol policies and adolescent drinking behaviors? For example, do strict policies reduce heavy drinking? What about heavy episodic or so-called “binge” drinking? Research Study Researchers wanted to know. So they studied the matter among 15- and 16-year old youth in 40 European and North American countries. Data on drinking were from …
A reader sent the following opinion piece. It addresses the ignored civil rights issue of our time. The writer wishes to remain anonymous. As we students return to campus each fall, we are bombarded with politically correct rhetoric. It focuses on race, gender, and sexual orientation. Activists tell us that America is systemically racist, …
Zero tolerance for underage drinking or possession of alcohol has strong public support. However, popular support doesn’t make zero tolerance effective. In fact, it’s often counterproductive. Radley Balko is an award-winning writer for the Washington Post and a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Balko is a former policy analyst for the Cato Institute and a …
The “A Matter of Degree” program to prevent alcohol abuse is ineffective. It was to reduce drinking and alcohol-related problems on college campuses. The Program Ten universities across the U.S. received almost nine million dollars to reduce the presence of alcohol in their campus environments. One of the strongest supporters of the program, Henry Wechsler, and …
In his discussion below on teen alcohol brain science, journalist John Buell raises serious questions. For more observationd by John Buell, visit “Facts of Teen Prohibition” and “Underage Drinking Problem Prevention.” Earlier I suggested that collegiate binge drinking would increase if society intensified campaigns against all underage drinking. Recent publicity about new scientific evidence on …
John Buell is a columnist at the Bangor Daily News. Here he gives some thoughts on underage drinking problem prevention. Also see his “Facts of Teen Prohibition: Facing Its Grim Failure – What Parents Can Do” and My critics are certain that teens are uniquely damaged even by modest amounts of alcohol. Yet if readers …
Virtually everyone loves the ineffective DARE program. That is, except scientific researchers. They consistently find that that it is completely ineffective. In fact not a single published report has ever found DARE to be effective. Indeed, some have even found it to be counterproductive. That is, program students later consumed more alcohol than those who …
