AFTER 20-YEAR DECLINE,UPTICK SEEN IN TEEN DRINKING AND DRIVING

Safety: Researchers say that statistical difference is small but
disturbing.Activists say the abstention message needs to be renewed.

Drunken driving and deaths from drunken driving are down as the result
of a concerted two-decade campaign. But a new study suggests that
drinking and driving or riding with someone who is drunk might be
increasing among high school seniors.

Researchers at the University of Michigan say their review of annual
surveys of seniors indicates a "recent leveling and, perhaps, an
upturn in rates of driving after drinking by students."

Patrick O'Malley, of the university's Institute for Social Research,
and lead author of the study published today in the American Journal
of Public Health, said while the surveys seem to indicate that
drinking and driving is becoming more prevalent among the teens, "the
statistical differences are pretty small. We're not sure how much it's
gone up, but we're quite sure it's not going down, and after a decade
of declines, that's cause for concern."

The study was released just a day after the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration reported that the proportion of traffic deaths
blamed on booze declined from 57 percent to 39 percent from 1982 to
1997.

Specifically Michigan researchers found that, in 1984, more than 31
percent of the teens in the national survey said that within the past
two weeks they had either driven drunk or been a passenger with
someone who had been drinking. By 1995, that figure had fallen to 16.1
percent, but by 1997 it had increased to 19.1 percent.

O'Malley and his colleagues suspect that the same sort of
"generational forgetting" of the dangers of illicit drugs that seems
to have produced an upturn in teen drug use in the mid '90s has also
occurred with drunken driving.

Responses to another question in the survey are telling: In 1984, just
30 percent of seniors said their friends would "strongly disapprove"
of their driving after having one or two drinks; by 1993, that
percentage had risen to 48 percent. "But it's been virtually static at
about half in the five years since then," O'Malley noted.

"Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy of someone being killed from
driving and alcohol use for a school and a community to take notice
and address underage drinking, and the effect usually only lasts for a
year or two after the death," said Karolyn Nunnallee, national
president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

"The alcohol industry would like everyone to think that this problem
is under control, but there were still 2,000 alcohol-related traffic
deaths of young people aged 15 to 20 last year. I hope that we as a
country haven't become so numbed that we will allow the numbers to
creep back up again," Nummallee added.

National campaigns against drunken driving since the 1980s have
focused on educating drivers, and particularly young drivers, to the
dangers, as well as fostering less tolerance for the practice.

"Our focus has always been on youth, and we give a clear no-use
message, but many people don't understand that," Nunnallee said. "Too
many parents think the solution is to host a keg party in the back
yard, but it's not."

An array of new laws and police enforcement tactics have come to bear,
including almost universal blood alcohol level limits of 0.10. Sixteen
states, including California, have 0.08 limits, and 40 states have
laws allowing for routine license revocation for alcohol offenses. At
the same time, the minimum drinking age has been raised by federal
law to 21.