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PIRE Press Releases

Euro youth drink and get drunk more than U.S. youth

Belief that European teens are more responsible with alcohol is wrong, experts say

BERKELEY, CA - Many Americans believe that young people from European have less trouble with alcohol because their cultures teach them to handle alcohol responsibly from an early age. A recent report debunks that myth, showing that a great majority of European countries have higher intoxication rates among young people than the United States, and some countries are much higher.

Data collected from 15- and 16-year-olds in 35 European countries – from Greenland to Turkey – show that European kids drink more often, drink more heavily and get drunk more often than American teens, according to researchers from the PIRE Prevention Research Center (PRC) in Berkeley, CA.

“The claim that Europeans learn to drink moderately and safely in a family setting has been used by many in the United States to argue for lowering the drinking age,” said one of the report Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation Page 2 of 2 authors, Dr. Joel Grube, director of PRC. “But our research shows that premise is a myth.”

Easy access to alcohol seems to allow young people to drink heavily and in a risky fashion, whether in Europe or the United States, Dr. Grube said. “Raising the drinking age in the United States has been an extremely effective public health and safety policy,” he said. “Based on our research, weakening that policy would be a serious mistake.”

Every European country except Turkey had higher teen drinking rates than the United States. However, lest anyone think that’s widespread but moderate drinking, the rate of binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row) was also higher in every country except Turkey. In the United States, 22 percent of surveyed teens binge drank in the past 30 days, the survey showed. In Denmark, that figure was 60 percent, in Germany 57 percent, in Britain 54 percent, in Italy 34 percent and in France 28 percent.

Intoxication rates in the last 30 days for U.S. teens was 18 percent, compared to 61 percent in Denmark, 53 percent in Ireland, 48 percent in Austria and 46 percent in Britain. Only six European countries had lower intoxication rates than the United States.

The data from Europe were collected as part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs. The U.S. data were from the Monitoring the Future survey conducted annually among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in the U.S. The study, “Youth drinking rates and problems: A comparison of European countries and the United States,” was funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice. For the full report, go to www.udetc.org/documents/CompareDrinkRate.pdf.

PIRE, or Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, is a national nonprofit public health research institute with centers in seven cities and funded mostly by federal research and program grants and contracts.

November 10, 2005

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Violence and Alcohol Outlets: New Report

BERKELEY, Calif. - When bars, liquor stores and other businesses that sell alcohol are located close together in neighborhoods, more assaults and other violent crimes occur in those neighborhoods, according to a growing body of research examined in a newly released white paper.

Government agencies concerned about neighborhood violence can confront this problem though a variety of interventions, including controlling liquor licenses and locations, setting minimum distances between outlets and closing outlets that repeatedly violate liquor laws.
Entitled "How Alcohol Outlets Affect Neighborhood Violence," the paper is written for use in policy development, government, journalism and community advocacy. It is based largely on the work of Paul Gruenewald, Ph.D., scientific director of the Prevention Research Center (PRC), and was authored by Kathryn Stewart, component director for PRC. She is available for presentations on the subject.
The paper is available at: http://resources.prev.org/documents/AlcoholViolenceGruenewald.pdf.
Other research and materials on environmental strategies for the prevention of alcohol abuse are available on PRC's resource Web site: www.resources.prev.org.

May 2, 2005

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Community Vigilance on Alcohol Control Can Cut Teen Drinking

BERKELEY , CA - Community attitudes and efforts on underage drinking may have the biggest impact on whether teens binge drink and drive drunk, according to new research.

While many prevention programs focus on responsible behavior when it comes to alcohol, the study by the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley and the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, OR, found that it's the amount of law enforcement against underage purchases and the number of outlets where youth can buy alcohol that are the biggest determinants for underage drinking, binge drinking and drive while impaired.

"These findings are important because they provide research evidence for what has been apparent to us for some time: Communities can reduce underage drinking by reducing the number of alcohol outlets that will sell to kids and by increasing enforcement of minimum purchase age laws," said study author Joel Grube of the Prevention Research Center. "These are steps that every community can take to protect its children."

The study, entitled " Community level alcohol availability and enforcement of possession law as predictors of youth drinking", was published in the December issue of the journal Preventive Medicine. It included a survey of 93 Oregon communities, with responses from more than 16,000 11 th grade students (16-17 years old). Students answered questions about how often and how much they drank, where they obtained alcohol, and whether they drove impaired or rode with an impaired driver. They were also asked how likely they were to get caught by police if they drank alcohol. Of the students who reported drinking, 30 percent said that they obtained alcohol from commercial sources such as a convenience store or grocery store. More than 70 percent reported that they obtained alcohol from friends, parents or other social sources.

Students who were able to purchase alcohol from stores had higher levels of drinking, impaired driving or riding with an impaired driver. Students tended to drink and binge less in communities where respondents said they were more likely to be caught by police if they drank.

"We found that those communities where more commercial sources were available also had higher rates of students who used friends under 21 and parents as sources of alcohol," Grube said. "The fact that in these same communities the young people also obtain alcohol from their parents may indicate a tolerant attitude towards underage drinking in the community as a whole."

The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the State of Oregon Department of Human Services and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Study authors are Clyde Dent and Anthony Biglan from ORI and Joel Grube from Prevention Research Center, which is a center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

Dec. 17, 2004

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Experts say Snus far less dangerous than Marlboros Low-carcinogen smokeless product shows 90 percent lower mortality risk

CALVERTON, M.D. - Is smokeless tobacco really safer than cigarettes? The answer is yes, much safer, if it comes from Sweden, according to a study published in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The study asked nine leading tobacco epidemiologists to estimate what the relative risk of death would be for people using a low-nitrosamine form of smokeless tobacco called Snus, when compared to smoking Marlboro or Newport cigarettes. The expert panel estimated that the relative mortality risk was 90 percent lower overall, 70 to 85 percent lower for oral cancers, 97 percent lower for lung cancer and 90 percent lower for heart disease.

Not all smokeless tobacco products are the same. In many parts of the world, smokeless tobacco is a major cause of oral cancer, and high nitrosamines levels are thought to be the reason why. Many smokeless products in the United States are relatively high in nitrosamines. However, Snus, a smokeless tobacco very popular in Sweden, has very low nitrosamine levels because of the way it is manufactured and refrigerated.

Deaths from tobacco-caused diseases have declined sharply in Sweden over the past 20 years at the same time that many adult males either switched from cigarettes to Snus or used Snus exclusively. This finding has led some scientists to speculate that Snus contributed to the reduction in tobacco-attributable deaths in Sweden.

The study, "The Relative Risks of a Low-Nitrosamine Smokeless Tobacco Product Compared with Smoking Cigarettes: Estimates of a Panel of Experts," was funded by the National Cancer Institute. Lead author Dr. David Levy, an economist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, said, "We did this study because there seems to be a lot of confusion about the relative dangers of smokeless tobacco compared to cigarettes, even though common sense would suggest that cigarette smoking would be far more dangerous."

The study shows that regulation could change the tobacco market and reduce public health risks. If the U.S. government would regulate nitrosamine levels in smokeless tobacco and communicate factual information to consumers, it could result in some consumers substituting low-nitrosamine smokeless products for the far more hazardous cigarettes.

"The huge difference in relative risk of different tobacco products as judged by leading scientists cries out for a regulatory environment that would force tobacco manufacturers to produce less dangerous tobacco products," said David Sweanor, an adjunct professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa.

"This study does not mean that all smokeless tobacco products are 90 percent less risky than cigarettes, so manufacturers shouldn't use the findings to claim that their products are safer than cigarettes," said epidemiologist Gary Giovino of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. "Even low-nitrosamine smokeless tobacco is riskier than not smoking."

Dec. 16, 2004

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Puffing Even One Cigarette in Childhood Dramatically Increases Odds of Future Smoking

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.- Childhood experimentation with tobacco is far more likely to lead to a daily smoking habit than most people believe. A child who smokes only one cigarette by age 10 is nearly twice as likely to be a current smoker at age 17 than a 10-year-old who never puffed a cigarette, according to a new study.

Seemingly insubstantial increases in the number of cigarettes kids smoke actually translate into big increases in the probability of habitual smoking by late adolescence, concludes a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The study is the first to follow the smoking habits of the same group of youths from third grade to high school. The study also showed that those who smoked two to four cigarettes by 5 th grade were three times more likely to smoke daily later in life than those who never experimented with tobacco in childhood. Kids who smoked more than five cigarettes were four times more likely to become daily smokers.

Entitled "Cigarette consumption during childhood and persistence of smoking through adolescence," the research report was authored by Christine Jackson, Ph.D., senior research scientist at the Chapel Hill Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

Approximately 600 children from a school district in central North Carolina were surveyed about their tobacco use for three years beginning in 1993, and then again in 2002.

"It surprised us that relatively small increases in cigarettes smoked during childhood predicted such large differences in the odds of habitual smoking eight years on," Jackson said. "Our research suggests that any cigarette use during childhood makes a big difference in future smoking, which in turn can mean serious health consequences later in life."

These findings underscore the importance of reducing children's access to tobacco, Jackson said. Children most frequently obtain their first few cigarettes from their own family members or friends' family members. More research and program development are needed on prevention of this social access to cigarettes by children, she said.

This tobacco-use study is the first to measure cigarette use annually during childhood and follow a group of young people through teen-age years. Other studies on childhood initiation of smoking are based on asking teen-agers about their tobacco use as children. Jackson's research showed that such recollections had a high likelihood of false reporting.

"Because we interviewed the same group of young people when they were children and again when they were adolescents, we could test how well adolescents can recall whether and when they smoked during childhood," Jackson said. "We found that about 80 percent of adolescents who tried smoking during childhood didn't remember starting so young. This is important because many researchers use recall data from adolescents to test whether early smoking experience is harmful over the long term."

Nov. 8, 2004

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Sobriety Checkpoints Sporadic Despite Proven Effectiveness
Frequent Use Could Reduce Deaths By 20 Percent, Research Shows

CALVERTON, MD - Sobriety checkpoints could significantly reduce the 17,000 deaths and half-million injuries each year in drinking driving crashes, but police agencies aren't using them nearly as often or as effectively as they could, according to new research.
A research report by three of the nation's top traffic safety experts found that checkpoints clearly save lives and prevent injuries. But because of misperceptions that checkpoints aren't productive or cost effective, and a lack of publicity about them in the local media, most police agencies and state highway patrols don't use them enough. The report by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, based upon numerous past studies by the authors, was published this month in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.

More frequent and better publicized sobriety checks can cut impaired driving fatal crashes by 20 percent, the research shows. Public awareness about checkpoints is critical to their effectiveness because it deters people from drinking and driving. Public support for checkpoints remains high, but local publicity about individual events has been waning, according to the researchers.

While the number of people killed in alcohol-related crashes has declined from about 26,000 in 1982 to 17,000 last year, the death toll remains unacceptably high, and needlessly so, according to James C. Fell, the principal investigator for the report. Fell is director of Traffic Safety and Enforcement Programs for Pacific Institute.

"There's strong evidence that, if conducted on a weekly basis and highly publicized, checkpoints would save a lot more lives," he said. "Unfortunately, misperceptions about checkpoints have become barriers to their use, and Americans are paying for it with their lives."

In an earlier study sponsored by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Fell surveyed police agencies and found a half-dozen faulty beliefs underlying most police agencies' reluctance to fully utilize checkpoints. For example, concerns about cost and manpower deter many departments, but that's due to the mistaken belief that large numbers of officers, usually eight to twelve, must be used for checkpoints. Research sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found checkpoints using only three to five officers were just as effective.

That study also found that the belief by many police officers that checkpoints yield few arrests is incorrect and misses the point. Checkpoints serve as a general deterrent to drinking and driving and are primarily designed to reduce the behavior in the first place. In addition, officers at checkpoints can achieve arrest rates as high as or higher than traditional enforcement methods.

Checkpoints would become even more effective if agencies used widely available devices called passive alcohol sensors. These sensors, which are typically installed in flashlights, can quickly provide an indication of whether a driver has been drinking. Armed with that information, officers at checkpoints could better target drinking drivers and markedly improve the efficiency of checkpoints. State legal decisions have ruled that alcohol sensors held through open driver-side windows don't constitute a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, so police could freely use them. But few police agencies do.

The authors of this report are James C. Fell, the former chief of research and evaluation of traffic safety programs for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, where he worked from 1969 to 1999; John Lacey, who has been involved in impaired driving research for 30 years, including 20 years at the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina; and Robert Voas, who has been involved in research on alcohol and highway safety for over 30 years, serving as principal investigator on more the a dozen research contracts for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Sept. 15, 2004

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Extreme Binges: More Than 24 Drinks Not Uncommon Among Young College Drinkers, Study Shows

BERKELEY, CA - College drinking may be worse than people think. More than 24 drinks in a row among freshmen male drinkers is not uncommon, a new study shows.

With millions of freshmen entering college this month, university administrators should be on the look out for this extremely hazardous binge drinking that's at its worst among the youngest students and at the beginning of the academic year.

While alcohol abuse has been recognized as a serious problem on college campuses, the study by the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation shows that many students drink at levels high enough to cause catastrophic health consequences. Past research on binge drinking has looked only at consumption of five drinks or more, without quantifying how much more. As it turns out, some students may drink a lot more. The recent survey of college students in California found that among 1,000 male college drinkers, there are 50 or more occasions per month in which 24 or more drinks may be consumed.

"These are levels of drinking at which most men will have passed out or become comatose," says Paul J. Gruenewald, Ph.D., senior researcher at the Berkeley, CA-based Prevention Research Center. "These are levels at which drinkers are at risk for the very serious problems posed by peak drinking, including alcohol poisoning. When you see just how much some students may drink, it's easier to understand how these young people may suffer from many alcohol-related accidents and injuries, some as simple as falling out of a dormitory window."

Results of the study, which was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, indicate that college drinkers may have 12 or more drinks on about 10 percent of drinking occasions. Male college drinkers may have 12 or more drinks on 20 percent of these occasions.

Prevention efforts such as responsible beverage sales and service, reductions in the numbers of outlets that sell alcohol around campuses and police enforcement programs that deter underage sales and drinking can be effective. These strategies can be made even more effective when policy makers understand the extremely dangerous drinking that occurs among young students, Dr. Gruenewald said.

"We want to see many fewer reports of student tragedies related to extremely high levels of drinking," he said. "Our new understanding of peak drinking among college students can pave the way towards better college prevention programs."

Sept. 7, 2004