WATCHING TV RAISES LIKELIHOOD TEENS WILL DRINK, STUDY FINDS

VCR reduces risk; video, computer games have no effect

High school students who watch lots of television and music videos are
more likely to start drinking alcohol than other youngsters,
researchers said.

The Stanford University study of 1,533 ninth-graders also showed that
youngsters who rented movies were less likely to start drinking, while
playing video and computer games had no effect.

Watching TV and videos made no difference in the drinking habits of
those who already drank.

The findings are not surprising given research that shows alcohol is
the most common beverage shown on television, the study's lead author,
Thomas Robinson, said Monday.

``The great majority of drinking on television is by the most
attractive and most influential people, and it is often associated
with sexually suggestive content,'' said Robinson, who works at the
school's Center for Research and Disease Prevention.

The study found that each increase of one hour per day of watching
music videos brought a 31 percent greater risk of starting to drink
over the next 18 months. Each hour increase of watching other kinds of
television corresponded to a 9 percent greater risk.

Each hour spent watching movies in a VCR corresponded to an 11 percent
decreased risk of starting to drink alcohol. Computer and video games
had no effect either way.

The study, reported in this month's edition of the journal Pediatrics,
looked at 2,609 ninth-graders in San Jose and followed 1,533 of them
throughout the 18 months.

They reported their activities -- how many hours they played video
games, for example -- and were asked how many drinks of alcohol they
had ever had, and how many they had in the previous month. Over the
next 18 months, 36.2 percent of 898 non-drinkers began to drink.

Television habits had no effect on the 635 students who already drank,
the authors said.

But of the students who did not drink at the start of the study, what
they watched on television played a major role in what they did over
the next 18 months, the study found.

Alyse Booth, spokeswoman for the National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, said the results
of the study did not surprise her.

``There is a tremendous glamorization of the use of alcohol,'' she
said. ``Alcohol use is portrayed as normal and glamorous, never with
the consequences.''

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady