Underage_Drinking

Underage Drinking Sherry Foster Mr. Flowers English 3 12 December 01 The number one problem among young people today is underage drinking. More than 11 million drinkers in the U.S. are adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20. The average age to start drinking is 13. Of the young drinkers, 20% engage in binge drinking (consuming 5 or more drinks on a single occasion) and 6% were heavy drinkers (consuming 5 or more drinks on a single occasion on at least 5 different days). Out of these 11 million, 10.4 million have had at least one drink in the past month, of these 6.8 million were binge drinkers and 2.1 million were heavy drinkers. By the time these young people are high school seniors, more than 80% have used alcohol and approximately 62% have been drunk. This information is not surprising when more that 50% of the attempts to buy alcohol by minors were successful. Due to underage drinking there are many more alcohol-related accidents than before. In 1998, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) completed a seven-year study on under age drinking. This study found that young people who begin drinking before the age of alcohol, drinking, young, people, parents, drink, age, females, don’t, before, about, time, one, males, likely, while, under, million, drinkers, days, begin, 21, 15, underage, person, need, license, intoxicated, fee, body, bac, year, water, talk