GUEST EDITORIAL: TEENAGERS ON A BINGE

Under-age drinkers consume about 20 percent of all the alcohol imbibed
in this country, according to a report published last week in The
Journal of the American Medical Association. Many parents are already
aware of the horrific problem young Americans have with binge
drinking, but it's time to spread the alarm.

The alcoholic beverage industry dismisses the new study, by Columbia
University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, as an
"attempt to manipulate data to get headlines." But the study gains
credence from being published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal,
where an editorial by the heads of two federal substance abuse
agencies called its findings on under-age drinking "of particular concern."

The center got into trouble last year when it estimated that young
people between the ages of 12 and 20 (below the legal drinking age)
consumed a quarter of all alcoholic beverages sold in this country.

The study turned out to be statistically incorrect.

But the new, well-scrubbed estimates are still awful, and though they
are almost twice as high as suggested by a government survey, the
center argues plausibly that its figures are better.

The bad news certainly did not arrive in a vacuum.

The latest survey of youths' risky behavior by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention found that 30 percent of all high school
students had engaged in "episodic heavy drinking" within the last 30
days, which means they each had five or more drinks in a row on one or
more occasions during the month.

In a University of Michigan survey last year, 30 percent of high
school seniors reported being drunk at least once in the past 30 days.
Teenagers are not just having a glass of beer or wine with a pizza --
they are binge drinking at a disturbing rate.

Teenage drinking rates have fallen by some measures in recent decades,
a change that may be partly attributable to the legal drinking age's
being raised to 21 in all states.

But as often happens when it comes to the relationship between
Americans and alcohol, many of the young people who continue to drink
appear to be the very ones least able to control their
consumption.

Experts have called for more aggressive educational campaigns, and
some want higher taxes on alcoholic beverages. One clever suggestion
is to require that labels on alcoholic beverages announce the caloric
content prominently. The idea that drinking to excess is fattening
might deter teenagers and adults.

Still, much of the responsibility for policing drinking habits will
necessarily fall on parents.

They should be especially disturbed to learn that the average age at
which young people start drinking has dropped to 14. Research has
shown that the younger the starting age, the higher the likelihood of
lifetime alcohol dependence.